Dead Space 2 - Harry Potter's Tale
by Jakespeed207
Summary: Thirteen years after the defeat of Lord Voldemort, Hermione Granger asks Harry Potter to help her test out a new invention of hers. What will happen when her invention sends Harry into the world of the latest survival horror game of their time, Dead Space 2?
1. Chapter 1

**Nothin' much to say about this. Just enjoy and any feedback is well appreciated!**

* * *

><p>"Hey, Harry!"<p>

Harry Potter, the now thirty year old Boy-Who-Lived/Man-Who-Conquered, turns in order to greet the owner of the voice he recognises so well, Hermione Granger. The ministry is quite crowded at this time, being around two in the afternoon, but Harry is nonetheless able to spot her crown of bushy hair even from a mile away.

"Hiya, Mione," Harry says with a smile when she is in front of him, drawing her into a hug that she reciprocates with a chuckle.

"When are you going to stop calling me that, Harry?" Hermione asks, her smile showing she isn't at all offended by the shortening of her name.

"When I'm six feet under, and even then, my last will and testament will probably also call you that as well," Harry laughs as he joins her in one of the lifts that goes up to the Atrium.

Hermione giggles at his choice of words, followed by asking, "How are things going with Ginny?"

Harry sighs in resignation at the question. "Not well. Ginny still insists we go to all of these balls and receptions that she gets invited to so that she can drag me there, but I just don't want to be in the spotlight any more than I already am. She doesn't seem to understand that, unfortunately."

"It'll work out, Harry. Don't worry," Hermione assures him, putting a hand against his cheek, which made his stomach do a small, familiar flip that he still can't understand in the twenty-seven years he has known her. Harry turns the question around by asking, "How are things with you and Ron?"

"Just about the same. Ronald still refuses to get off his lazy butt and apply himself regularly, and honestly… I'm thinking of… breaking things off with him if this keeps up," Hermione admits with a frown.

Harry turns to her with a shocked look. "But, Mione…"

"Harry, I just can't deal with him anymore," Hermione says with a sigh. "Our relationship isn't working out, and unfortunately it won't get better anytime soon."

Harry thinks of arguing, but eventually nods and looks down. "You know best, Mione. If nothing else, I've learned that rather well since first year."

Hermione cheekily smiles at him. "And don't you forget it, Potter."

They share a laugh over that, but Hermione quickly gets down to business. "Actually, Harry, I wanted to ask if you would help me with someething."

"Sure, anything you need, Mione," Harry says immediately.

Hermione smiles and says, "Careful with that phrase. What if I asked you to pretend to be my husband for a few weeks?"

Harry splutters slightly at the question, making Hermione break out into giggles. The lift had reached the Atrium by now and opens up, letting a giggling Hermione and a red-faced Harry off.

"Regardless," Harry pushes on, "What do you need help with?"

"Well, come with me to my flat. I'll explain more there," Hermione says, taking some Floo powder from nearby and getting into a fireplace, disappearing in green flames. Harry follows seconds later.

* * *

><p>Unfortunately, if there is one thing Harry hasn't gotten better at in the thirteen years since the defeat of Voldemort, it is Floo travel. Therefore, he ends up falling out of the fireplace at high speed, tripping over a stray book, impressively doing a front flip, then landing on his back on Hermione's wooden floor.<p>

"Ouch…" Harry moans, eyes shut tight in discomfort. A giggle from above him makes him open his eyes, which gives him the image of Hermione standing over him and smirking knowingly at him, her feet inches away from his head.

"I give you a three out of ten for the entrance, but an eight out of ten for the front flip," Hermione chortles, making Harry grumble slightly before he too chuckles at the situation. Picking himself up, he wandlessly cleans himself off and then cleans the floor before turning to Hermione.

"You were oddly forgiving with the point awarding," Harry says with a raised eyebrow.

"Feeling nice today, mister. Don't push it," Hermione shrugs. Harry shrugs as well and takes off his jacket, putting it on a nearby chair that is stacked with books. Hermione's place is a comfortable one-floor house that has a large basement the witch had made herself for any magical projects. The kitchen and dining are a single room, and it has a small bedroom and bathroom, which is more than enough for one person and just enough for two.

"Now, what did you need help with, Mione?" Harry asks once again. Hermione motions for him to follow her into the basement. Once downstairs, she enters a side room he hadn't noticed before, which leads into a medium-sized room with meetal floors and walls. As Harry looks around in interest, he notices that there are many notes attached to or written on all kinds of boards around the room, from blackboards to cork boards, where Hermione had attached papers using thumbtacks. The most interesting object in the room, however, is a large seat in the middle which is connected to several cables that lead all around the room. It has a head cover hanging from the top of the back of the chair, similar in size and shape to the head covers which dry hair in women's salons. Harry can barely sense a bit of magical energy coming out of the chair, but he notes that it doesn't feel anything like normal magical energy. In fact, it feels almost… electrified is the best word he can use in this instance.

"What is that, Mione?" Harry asks curiously, walking around the chair to get a good look at it.

"It's the project I've been working on lately," Hermione explains, pushing a few buttons next to the door which dim the lights a little and turn on a bright bulb above the chair. With the way the chair looks under the light, Harry would have called it the electric chair used for executions if he didn't know better. "Remember the breakthrough the Unspeakables and I had regarding muggle technology not working alongside magic?"

"Yeah, I remember. You all got Honor of Merlin, Second Class awards for figuring out a way to combine them without the computers and phones going haywire."

"Yes, well, after seeing several 3-D movies that have come out lately, I began to wonder if it isn't possible to actually send the human mind into the events of a film or even a video game. Almost like you're there, but not really there, in case of the films, at least. When I began to research video games as well, I think literally being _in _the game would enhance depth and enjoyment in it. So, after a few months of gruelling work, I made this!" She waves dramatically at the chair, making Harry chuckle.

"So, how does it work?" Harry asked.

"Well, when you sit on the chair, the head piece covers your head and synchronises with your brainwaves and thought patterns. A charm on it makes you to fall asleep, which allows the machine to fully activate your synapses and show you everything in a closer three-dimensional plane, where you are literally inside the film or game. The thing is… I still haven't tested it out."

"And that's what I'm here for, I assume," Harry states with a smirk.

Hermione looks a little embarrassed but nods. "I needed someone to try it out while I take notes and make sure everything is running correctly. I'm sorry for asking so suddenly-,"

"It's fine, Mione. I'll be glad to try it out," Harry says, waving her apology away.

"Thank you, Harry," Hermione says with a smile. They remain smiling at each other for a few more seconds before the situation hits them and they look away with red faces and stammering mouths.

"I'll just… start it up then," Hermione says, walking to the chair and pushing a few buttons on its arm.

"Y-yeah," Harry stutters.

Some moments later, the chair is fully online and functional. Harry sits on the chair, where Hermione ties some belts around his legs and wrists. "To keep you down in case of any sudden jerks or movements you might make in your sleep," Hermione says when he asked. "I don't fully know what would happen if the head piece are to just fall off your head, but I know it shouldn't happen."

Harry nods and prepares himself for what is to come. Before lowering the head piece on his head, Hermione explains, "Now, I'm going to be watching from this screen here ***she waves to a large plasma screen that takes up an entire wall, which Harry hadn't ****noticed ****before because the wall had just turned around in order to show it* **so if you want to exit at any time, just say it aloud and I'll shut down the machine in about a minute. I can't do it immediately or it could have damaging results on your brain."

Finally, Harry asks a question that has been at the forefront of his mind in the last few minutes. "Mione, what games do you have installed on the machine?"

"Oh, I forgot to explain that," Hermione says, slapping her forehead. "Thanks for reminding me. I programmed it to download the latest game available from an online store which puts PC games online. I set up a bank account which pays for each game it downloads."

"Isn't that a little expensive?" Harry asks.

"Somewhat, yes, but I can approve or decline the final sale whenever a game comes out, so I still manage it well."

Harry nods and asked, "So, what's the latest game that it has?"

"I believe the last game it downloaded is a survival horror game called **_Dead Space 2 _**that came out about a week ago," Hermione says, biting her lip in thought.

"Neat!" Harry exclaims. Ever since he discovered video games, he had always been fascinated by survival horror games, or maybe just horror games in general. Probably due to the adventurer side of him, but hey, they are fun as hell to play.

Hermione smiles at his enthusiasm and grabs the head piece, saying, "Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be. Let's do it!"

Hermione nods and lowers the piece over his head. Almost immediately, Harry becomes sleepy and nods off, his sight becoming black for some time. Moments later, however, he 'wakes' to find himself in what appears to be a fully white room, similar to the Limbo he had visited when Voldemort had hit him with the Killing Curse years back.

Unfortunately, he finds that, just like in Limbo, he is naked as the day he was born.

"Oh, bloody hell," Harry mutters as he notices this. He attempts to think of clothes, but they don't appear, so he gives it up after the fifth try. He shakes his head and focuses, now noticing what appears to be a large, floating computer screen in front of him. Harry realises it is a touch screen and selects the option **Video games **from the two options given. A list immediately opens up, with the stored games organised by date released. Harry quickly selects **_Dead Space 2_** and watches as his surroundings disappear into inky darkness.

* * *

><p>Hermione nearly faints when the first image the large plasma screen shows her is a naked Harry standing in a vast, white space. Her first thought is that Ginny must be quite the lucky woman before she forces herself to focus on Harry's face and watches, red-faced, as he immediately selects <strong><em>Dead Space 2<em>**.

"He's going straight for it?" Hermione asks out loud. She sighs a moment later. "Oh, right. He's always been in love with those kinds of games."

She continues watching as Harry's surroundings become black. Suddenly, however, the screen is filled by what appears to be outer space. She spots what seems to be a nebula behind a floating hologram of the makers of the game, E.A. and Visceral Studios. The hologram fades after a moment, only to be followed by the game's title. A "PRESS START TO BEGIN" sign fades in just under it, and Harry presses it, which transports him into what seems to be the inside of the human brain, filled with synapses and electrical currents. A holographic menu appears in front of Harry, and Hermione watches as he selects the "SINGLE PLAYER" option. The menu disappears and is replaced by another menu which shows the single player options. She notices that instead of selecting "NEW GAME", Harry instead goes for the option at the very bottom, labelled, "PREVIOUSLY ON DEAD SPACE".

Curious, she pulls a foldable chair from nearby and sits to watch what would happen.

* * *

><p>An image appears in front of Harry, showing him what looks to be a damaged Earth. A voice began to speak all around Harry, sounding almost like a teacher.<p>

_By the twenty-fifth century, Earth's resources __were __ravaged… consumed… exhausted. Desperate and on the verge of extinction, we cast out into the void of space, and discovered rich, new worlds waiting to be cracked open… and stripped bare. All of Earth became devoted to this effort. The Planetcrackers are built; the USG Ishimura the first and most famous. Planetcracking became routine; its spoils kept us alive. _

_Eventually, greedy eyes fell upon Aegis 7. Restricted for centuries for reasons unknown, greed and corruption s__aw __to the demise of caution._

_There, buried beneath the surface, an artefact… the Red Horcrux. _

Wait, what?

_Long lost, and long forgotten. The religion I once called my own had found its holy grail. The key to human immortality… or so we thought. It did not bring salvation…. It brought doom. The Horcrux bred insanity, murder, and chaos…_

_It bred Necromorphs._

The images Harry sees flashing past are all rather calm at first, and the image of the Red Horcrux surprises and interests him. It is a somewhat high tower with two twisting spires, which nearly meet a point. Harry didn't know why, but he feels some sort of connection to the thing, and can't help but wonder why in the world the thing is named a horcrux. But when he sees the necromorphs and their rampage, he is quite startled. This game is not to be trifled with, that he now knows. The twisted and bloody faces of the reanimated corpses would most likely be something he wouldn't forget anytime soon, none the least because they are directly in front of him, and he has the sneaky suspicion he'd see many more soon.

Outside, Hermione is pale at the description of the planet, and most importantly, at the sight of the necromorphs. She had just come to a startling realisation.

This is a survival horror game, which would no doubt be about an individual surviving some kind of horrible experience. But in games like these, death is always around the corner for the player. So… what would happen if Harry dies in the game?

_Those who escaped the planet fled to the safety of the orbiting Ishimura. The scourge released upon Aegis 7 came with them. _

_Within hours, the Ishimura went dark._

_The corporation dispatched a small repair crew to check on its investment. Among that crew __was __an engineer…_

_Harry Potter._

"What?!"

* * *

><p>"What?!" Hermione unwittingly repeats Harry's exclamation at what the narrator says. How in the world did Harry's name end up inside the game?! That can't be possible! But the game had also mentioned the word horcrux earlier…<p>

And so it is. On the screen, an image of none other than Harry is being shown. He seemed to be sitting inside a cockpit of some sort. He is wearing an armoured suit made of black material with some meetal coverings on his shoulders, arms, and, Hermione is sure, torso as well. This Harry has some cuts and bruises on his face, and his hair is matted. Worse of all are his eyes, which looks haggard and sunken, proof that he has seen and lived through a lot, possibly in a short time. Oddly, he isn't wearing glasses, but all that does is accentuate this Harry's physical problems.

The image scares Hermione. She has never seen Harry so… haggard. So defeated. This Harry had survived whatever had happened in the Ishimura… but at what cost?

Had her machine done more than just send Harry's consciousness into the game?

* * *

><p><em>He had something special aboard the Ishimura.<em>

After coming down from the shock of a game he never heard of using his name and image, when by all means it isn't about him in the slightest, Harry then notices that the screen has shifted to show a holographic video.

Even with the hologram being only coloured blue, he could never mistake the sight of the round, freckled face that appears in front of him.

"Ginny?"

_In the darkness, Harry found death…_

Images flash past of an armoured Harry fighting off several different corpses, all attempting to kill him. Tall ones with blades for hands… a large tentacle with a big, yellow spot… a bull-like necromorph that seems like it is about to flatten him… an even taller and more grotesque version of the first necromorph….

_And the Red Horcrux. It was not holy; it was not alien… it was man-made. And it could be used to stop the outbreak._

_Harry also found Ginevra…_

The scene shows Harry inside what seems like a gondola. He is looking to the side, where a woman who is unmistakably Ginny is standing and looking at Harry with happiness.

The following words shock him.

_Dead by her own hand, she was an apparition of the Horcrux…_

The image changes and shows the first video of Ginny he had seen. But, in this one, Ginny injects herself with something, and her eyes close as she slumps forward… distinctly dead.

"Ginny… no…"

_Harry engineered his escape… But everything else was destroyed._

The image becomes black, then shows the words, **THE NEXT CHAPTER FOR HARRY POTTER BEGINS.**

_Three years later, he wakes in a hospital on Titan Station, an EarthGov metropolis on Saturn's largest moon. Harry has survived, but his mind is no longer safe…_

_For the Horcrux… changes all…_

Harry stands in silence as the screen goes back to the single player menu.

"This… is really damn creepy… Mione, I don't know what your machine did, but if you are looking to increase depth in gaming… you freakin' found it!"

Without another word, Harry selects the "NEW GAME" option, and his surroundings go dim.

* * *

><p>Outside, Hermione is doing a rather good impression of a fish, her mouth opening and closing at intervals.<p>

"This… this is insane…" Hermione mutters after some time. After hearing Harry's outspoken words, she has to agree with him. This is definitely depth.

Maybe the machine used Harry's memories and feelings and implanted them into the storyline? But then, how could it change the image of everyone so easily? That, she could safely say, is most likely magic.

"I… I need to jot this down!" Hermione exclaims. She quickly summons a pen and notebook to her, then writes down everything that had happened.

To her shock, when she turns around to study Harry's body for any noteworthy effects, she sees something.

Or, rather, doesn't see something.

Harry's body is gone! There's nothing in the chair!

"Oh, no..." Hermione whispers as the realisation hits her. "He was literally transported into the game..."

She writes this down as well, finishing up just as the game begins.

* * *

><p>Harry watches as the screen suddenly flashes and shows several lines of computer code over a static screen.<p>

_/loading USG Ishimura Transnet module_

_/welcome back Ginevra Weasley_

_/Senior Medical Officer_

_{/EARTH-EURASI-034-XC-350-036/call initiated…}_

Several more lines follow before the screen goes fully into static, along with the sound of actual static, and some titles appear in front of Harry.

**Electronic Arts Presents…**

**A Visceral Games production…**

**DEAD SPACE 2**

The screen once again goes to static before focusing into a shaky image of none other than Ginny Weasley, gotten down to perfection.

"Well, that's Ginny, alright…" Harry mutters as he watches what's happening with fascination.

"Harry, are you there?" Ginny asks.

"Damn, even Ginny's voice is spot on," Harry comments out loud.

"Come ~iiiiin, Harry," she follows up in a sing-song voice before a smaller video screen appears that focuses into none other than Harry, seemingly waking up due to Ginny's call.

"Oh, God," Ginny says with an embarrassed laugh. "I'm so sorry, Harry! Look at- The time difference… I'll call you back later!"

"No, no, it's ok!" Harry assures her quickly, if with a sleepy voice.

"It's gotten my voice down to pat as well," the real Harry says.

Game-Harry stretches for a second before asking, "How you doin'?

"Good," Ginny responds with a smile. "You were right, Harry! The Ishimura is a **great** ship! I am _so _lucky to be serving aboard her."

"Well, enjoy it while it lasts. You know they're going to decommission her next year," game-Harry says.

"Oh, come on, me," Harry says with an exasperated tone, "That totally killed the moment!"

"Harry… thank you." Ginny says with a smile.

"For what?" game-Harry asked after a pause.

"For… just pushing me to do this! I mean, if it weren't for you, I _never _would have made it this far, because you made me stick with it…"

"Well, just remember, I'm giving you up for six months so you can do this…"

The transmission suddenly begins to experience static, and Ginny frantically talks into the screen.

"You know what, we must be getting out of range of the relay. Isaac? I… Isaac, can you hear me? Look, I'm going to call you back as soon as I can, alright?"

The video finally cuts off, and the camera begins to pan out to show Harry, in what appears to be a straightjacket, sitting at a table across from another man with ginger hair, slightly lighter than the Weasley red Harry knows.

The oddest thing is… the room around them is pitch black. The only light seems to come from a bulb above them that Harry can't see.

Abruptly, Harry's sight begins to zoom in toward game-Harry's head, and everything goes black for a moment before the image refocuses into just the sight of the table and the man across him.

Innately, Harry knows that he is now in first-person view, and in control of his character's mind.

"Harry… Harry!" The doctor yells, bringing Harry's focus to him. The doctor sits back a little with a satisfied smile. "You were drifting away for a moment there, Mr. Potter. I believe you were telling me about your… nightmares you've been having – about your dead girlfriend. What was her name?"

Harry doesn't answer, but he apparently doesn't need to, as his mouth answers on its own a moment later.

"Ginny…"

As if summoned by the name, an image of Ginny sitting on what appears to be a bench fades into view some feet away. The Ginny apparition is hunched over, her eyes looking at Isaac, and a syringe in her right hand aimed towards her left arm.

"I didn't want it to end like this," Ginny says softly and sadly. "I really wanted to see you again… just once. I loved you… I _always _loved you…"

The image of Ginny fades into the darkness just as the doctor starts talking again. "Yes, Ginevra Weasley. She was a senior medical officer stationed aboard a Planetcracker class vessel…"

"The Ishimura," Harry finishes.

"The USG Ishimura, yes…"

Images begin appearing to Harry's left, of a room Harry instinctively knows is the Mining Deck of the Ishimura. Shadows of necromorphs amble across the red-coloured wall, and the image shifts a little before disappearing.

"Part of a mining operation of Aegis 7," the doctor continues. "I understand communications went down shortly after their arrival. You were part of the repair mission – a mission for which you volunteered, am I right?"

Harry didn't know that piece of information, and his character says nothing. The doctor leans forward slightly and asks, "What did you find aboard that ship, Harry?"

Harry doesn't answer right away, but he does notice an image of the Red Horcrux flash in the same side of the room where all the other images had appeared before. In front of it, with her head bowed down, is none other than Ginny.

It fades away then flashes into sight again, this time closer. It does so five more times, each time closer and closer to the table.

"They found someething…" Harry mutters.

"What did they find aboard that ship, Harry?" the doctor asks in an almost conspiratory whisper.

"The Horcrux…" Harry answers, almost brusquely.

There is a pause, then the doctor continues. "Did you have contact with this… _Horcrux_?"

The flashing image of the Horcrux had now appeared rather close to the table, and does not fade away this time. On the contrary, the image of Ginny begins moving, walking towards the table, head still bowed.

"It made you see things, didn't it?" the doctor asks. "Things you didn't want to see?"

Ginny begins to step onto the desk as Harry answers grudgingly, "It spoke to me…"

"What did it say to you, Harry?" the doctor asks. When Harry doesn't respond, he repeats the question more forcefully. "What did it say to you, Harry?!"

But Harry isn't paying attention to the man anymore. Ginny had squatted down on the table, and is now staring at him. From the light of the bulb above them, Harry easily notices that her face is darkened and pale, like a dead body, and some blood trails are falling down her face.

"Make… us… whole…" the Ginny apparition whispers before fully opening her eyes and mouth, which begin to glow a sickly white that Harry can't look away from.

"Isaac?" the doctor yells. "Isaac?!"

"**MAKE US WHOLE!**"

Suddenly, Harry's vision is filled with a bright light.

* * *

><p>Hermione is currently watching the video from an over-the-shoulder view, but what she had seen was horrifying. She had seen Harry disappear into his virtual self's head, and could only deduce that he was now in a first person view.<p>

She was sure that those images had been in Harry's mind, as the doctor gave no sign that he sees them as well. She had read about some mental illnesses in muggle psychology books, and could only guess that in the game, Harry had some form of dementia or schizophrenia… possibly both.

"Oh, Harry," Hermione said breathlessly, "Be strong. You can do this."

* * *

><p>Harry's vision comes back as he opens his eyes and groggily notices that someone is flashing a light into his eyes. His muscles feel slightly weak, as though he hadn't used them in a long time, and his arms hurt from apparently sleeping in a straightjacket.<p>

"Harry?" a voice asks. "Harry, can you hear me?"

Harry groans as he begins to come around and looks into the face of his waker… only to notice another familiar face.

_'__Dean'_ Harry thinks.

Dean Thomas looks behind him when the banging of pipes is heard, then turns back to Harry, clips his flashlight to a magnetic strip on his shoulder, and makes a call via his RIG, which Harry somehow notices and understands, despite the fact that he knows nothing about RIGs or the Dead Space universe.

"Narcissa, I found Harry Potter. Repeat, I have him!"

Narcissa? As in, Narcissa Malfoy? How in the world is Dean somehow in contact, and apparently _friends_, with that woman? Harry didn't even think they had interacted at all in the real world.

But the voice that responds to Dean's call is definitely hers.

"Great work, Dean. Be careful, he's been out for a _long _time."

Dean cuts off the call and helps pull Harry into a standing position. Harry's legs protest, but he ignores them and wobbly stands up. He is barely aware of the fact that his RIG is yellow, signifying that he isn't exactly in good health.

"Okay… good, good. Steady…" Dean says encouragingly as he helps sustain Harry. "We have to get you out of this straightjacket."

"Where… Where am I?" Harry's character says as Dean struggles with the straightjacket. "Where the hell am I?"

A roar from the hallway outside Harry's room makes Dean turn his head for a second before turning back to Harry with a worried expression. "Alright, I know you're confused right now. I can explain everything, but you have to trust me, okay?" Dean places his arms on Harry's shoulders to emphasise his point. "Listen! You're in terrible, terrible dan-,"

BAM!

* * *

><p>Hermione screams as she watches her Gryffindor friend suddenly get impaled through his chest with a sharp tentacle. The scream increases in intensity as a manta-ray like creature climbs up to Dean's shoulders and stabs the proboscis directly into Dean's forehead, pushing it deeper inside and moving Dean's head side to side as it injects someething into him. The creature hops off after a second and moves away, leaving Dean's corpse standing over Harry and gripping his shoulders. Steam rises from Dean's form as he stares at Harry with unseeing eyes, groaning in a definitely non-human way, before his muscles tense, and, to Hermione's horror, a bladed arm sprouts from Dean's back in a spray of blood, quickly followed by another. Dean stretched his neck up, the skin of his neck breaking and falling away, leaving hanging veins and arteries and exposing the muscle underneath. The jaw suddenly splits apart, followed by the remaining skin left of Dean's face ripping away. The newly-formed necromorph suddenly pulls Harry close and screams in his face, and Hermione's only reaction is to scream for her best friend's sake.<p>

Harry, it seems, has a better reaction, as he immediately headbutts the creature, causing it to stumble back, and quickly walks out of his room/cell. A blue hologram appears as Narcissa's voice calls out, attempting to reach Dean.

"Dean? Dean, what happened?!"

"He's dead," Harry says shortly.

"Oh God…" Narcissa whispers before yelling out, "Harry? Harry Potter?! If you can hear me, run! RUN!"

"Run, Harry!" Hermione yelled.

Harry needs no more encouraging and runs, passing other cells and several dead bodies. He just misses a few slashers as they pop out of cells and vents in order to seek fresh meat. Harry runs as best as he can in a straightjacket, making several turns before finally finding an open door that is nearly closed.

"Oh, hell no!" Harry yells, putting on a burst of speed.

Unfortunately, just as he crosses the door's threshold, a necromorph that was playing dead on a wheelchair jumps on him, knocking him to the floor. Hermione screams in fear as the necromorph stabs Harry in the shoulder with its only arm, but the Man-Who-Conquered bears the pain with gritted teeth and kicks the necromorph back out of the room. Luckily for him, the doors close on the necromorph's upper torso, forcefully popping off its head and only arm, thus killing it.

Hermione remains still in shock, watching as Harry picks himself up and winces at the pain on his shoulder. Squaring his body, Harry begins to walk ahead, and Hermione only watches in fear and anxiety, wondering just what her best friend got himself into.

What _she _got him into...

* * *

><p>Harry finds a Save Station next to a door in the next hallway, and quickly uses it, not sure of what would happen next. He notes that he can select the needed information with just a thought, meaning that he is indeed still in the game. As the Save Station closes, Harry opens the next door with his RIG and walks through the door and into another hallway.<p>

As he turns the corner, he spots two EarthGov security guards standing under a hallway coloured with red light.

"Hello?" Harry calls out, making the two men turn to him with guns raised.

"Potter! Take him out!" one of them yells, and they both open fire.

"Whoa, whoa!" Harry yells out as he ducks behind a nearby bed. The gunfire abruptly stops, so Harry chances it and peers over the edge of the bed.

Some kind of tentacle had apparently reached down and stabbed one of the security guards through the chest before pulling him into the ventilation shaft, the man screaming the whole way. The sickening sound of ripping flesh comes from the opening as the other guard moves underneath the vent and aims his weapon up into the shaft.

"Not a smart move, bud," Harry mutters.

At rapid speed, the same tentacle reached down again and grabs the second security guard, pulling him into the vent as well. The man screams as he is pulled apart by the creature, and blood falls to the ground from the ventilation duct.

"Told you," Harry says as he stands and walks ahead. He carefully passes underneath the duct, but just as he is about to pass under the other duct opening of the shaft, someething falls out of it, directly in front of him.

That someething turns out to be the bloody and ripped apart torso of one of the security guards. Most of the flesh seems to have been eaten off, thus showing off the ribs in clear, bloody quality.

"Jeez… that's sick…" Harry says with a frown. Ignoring it for now, he continues and walks up a lifted path as a voice rings out, a voice also familiar to Harry.

_"__This is Director Scrimgeour to all project personnel. I want the key subjects terminated and the facility scrubbed. This is not a drill. Scrimgeour out."_

"Scrimgeour? Key subjects?" Harry asks himself. "What the fuck is going on here?"

Shrugging, Harry continues, entering a room labelled 'Observation Room'.

"Wonder what or who they were observing…" Harry wonders. "Considering the situation, I'd say me."

He carefully enters the observation room, finding it empty, save for a looping video log nearby. The voice of the doctor from the intro sequence says, "Subject is Seamus Finnigan, session one-five-eight."

"Seamus?" Harry asks aloud. "This I have to see."

Lo and behold, the familiar face of Seamus is what Harry sees in the video log. Harry stands in front of the video to watch.

"Now…" the doctor says as he walks around Seamus and pulls his head back to look at the man's eye. "The eye is looking much better… yes, don't you think?"

"I… It hurts… still hurts…" Seamus said in a shaky and broken voice.

"Yes, I'll schedule you for another session tomorrow."

"No… no, no… I… I don't think I'm ready… I don't think I can take another session… I-,"

"There, first thing tomorrow."

"This guy doesn't waste time, that's for sure," Harry mutters.

"Now, let's talk about what you saw today," the doctor says.

Seamus remains silent for a moment, only mumbling slightly.

"Come on, Finnigan," the doctor says. "I'm here to help you."

Harry snorts derisively.

"It was black…" Seamus says shakily. "Deep black, and glowing red, with symbols… symbols that whispered to me…"

"And what did the symbols whisper to you?" the doctor whispers into Seamus's ear. When Seamus doesn't immediately respond and simply looks around nervously, he becomes more forceful. "Come on, Finnigan, what?"

"It was just a shard! Just a shard, but it put so much stuff in my head! So much… SHITE in my head! There's no more room for anything! I can't remember what she looks like! Why can't I remember what she looks like?!"

"The symbols, Finnigan!" the doctor insisted. "What did the symbols tell you?!"

"They told me it wasn't my fault!" Seamus yelled. "I didn't kill him! They didn't deserve this and I didn't deserve this! **Fucker**…"

"Put Mr. Finnigan back in stasis. Adjust his medication up thirty milligrams, and we'll try another session first thing in the morning."

The video ends and then replays. Harry shakes his head and walks out of the room, wondering just what happened to his Gryffindor companion.

Scrimgeour's message plays again overhead, but Harry ignores it and continues walking. The next room he enters seems to be some kind of overhead observation room. A man is standing by the glass that looks down into a dark room, quietly laughing to himself and scraping the window with someething in his hand.

_'__Isn't that…'_

Indeed, as Harry tries to slowly walk around the crazily giggling guy, he turns suddenly and grabs Harry by the back of the neck, turning him around and bringing a scalpel up to his neck, all the time laughing maniacally.

* * *

><p>Hermione watches with wide eyes as Harry gets grabbed by the insane doctor and a scalpel is held up to his neck.<p>

"Shite! Come on, man…"

"Patient Four…" the doctor giggles. "I remember you… Scrimgeour said we… all the key subjects… need to be eliminated… _terminated_…"

Hermione didn't like where this was going.

"Listen," Harry pleads.

"Terminated…" the doc repeats "What's one more?"

"Listen to me, man."

"Will it matter?"

"Listen to me!"

"Will it matter?!"

"We can _both _get out of here," Harry insists, his eyes pleading. "Just… just cut me out of this straightjacket."

The doctor shakes his head and chuckles maniacally. "No one's getting out of here alive…"

To Hermione's horror, the doctor begins to lower the scalpel down to Harry's abdomen.

"Don't do it, man!" Harry pleads.

But it falls on deaf ears.

Hermione screams as the scalpel appears to be thrust into Harry's stomach. She waits, terrified, for Harry to bleed out, to drop to the floor…

To _die_…

But when she notices Harry's confused expression, she knows someething's up.

To her immense relief, the doctor pulls the scalpel up, which rips through the straightjacket's restraints with a rip and frees Harry's arms.

Harry stumbles back in shock, staring at the doctor in disbelief and surprise. The doctor stares back with a crazed smile, holding the scalpel to the side.

"There's no escaping from what I've done," the doc says with a chuckle.

"Take it easy, man," Harry says, lifting his hands reassuringly. "Just take it easy."

The doctor's face suddenly pulls into a frown, and he says, "Your RIG is red… it's red…" He points to a nearby locker and says, "There's a health pack and a flashlight in that wall locker… you should grab them…"

Harry stares warily at the doctor, his eyes flickering to the wall locker.

"Go ahead, take it," the doctor says. "I won't be needing it anymore."

Hermione is now at an impasse. Harry needs health, yes, but she isn't sure if the doctor would stab him in the back when he went to get the items. She hopes that Harry makes the right choice.

* * *

><p>Harry finally nods and carefully walks over to the locker. He opens it with the push of a button, and takes the health pack, using it immediately. His RIG's AutoDoc distributes the small amount of healing liquid to his body, calming the small shakes in his arms and legs and curing him of a few aches in his muscles, but by no means all. He is aware that his RIG has only gone up to yellow, but it's something.<p>

He then grabs the flashlight and tests it, making sure it works properly. When he is sure it does, he turns back to the doctor, who is now standing just in front of the glass.

"Harry…" The doctor says in a low voice, lifting his scalpel. "We're all going to **burn **for what we did to you…"

"No, don't do it!" Harry exclaims, reaching out to stop him, but he isn't fast enough.

The doctor thrusts the scalpel into his neck and pulls, slitting his own throat. A bright red smile appears on the doc's neck, gushing blood profusely. The doctor himself yells out as he does this, and after the deed, falls to the floor, his back leaning against the glass. He coughs and hacks a twice… before finally staying still forever.

Harry watches the scene with wide eyes. His mouth stammers out, "W-why, man?"

Finally, after a minute of staring at the corpse, Harry shakes his head and continues, opening the next door, which opens up into a hallway that leads to an elevator labelled 'To Patient Rec Room'.

As soon as he steps in, a video call appears in front of him, showing him the unmistakeable face of the woman who had been in contact with Dean earlier.

Narcissa Malfoy.

"Potter! Harry Potter, is that you?!"

"Who are you?" Harry's character asks, despite the fact that Harry knows quite well who she is.

"My name is Narcissa. I'm the one trying to rescue you…"

"Why?! What's going on?!"

"You're suffering from a unique form of dementia, Harry. Someething you contracted on Aegis 7."

Harry is understandably suspicious about this. "How do you know that? How do you know all this about me?!"

Narcissa merely shakes her head and ignores the question, instead saying, "Your dementia _will _kill you! But if you can get to me, I can treat you and get you to safety."

"Why should I trust you?" Harry asks icily.

"Because _I'm _not the one shooting at you!" Narcissa exclaims, seemingly losing patience with his bullheadedness.

"Fuck…" Harry mutters.

"Just follow the route I'm sending you," Narcissa says before the video goes to static and blinks out.

"Just great…" Harry mutters as the elevator doors open again. Harry walks out, and instinctively lifts his hand to waist level, palm down, activating his locator. A blue light comes out of his palm, forming a similarly blue line which leads to the room to the right. Harry deactivates the locator, walks forward and enters the room, which is absolutely pitch black. Lifting his flashlight, Harry walks ahead, moving around two long tables whose chairs are filled with murdered people.

Suddenly, just as Harry is moving around the second long table, a large screen to his left blasts on and startles him badly. His natural reaction, at least when not having a wand, is to punch the living daylights out of the screen. This has two consequences: it breaks the glass of the screen, shutting it off suddenly; and due to the broken glass, Harry's knuckles get cut open.

"Son of a bitch…" Harry mutters as he inspects his bleeding knuckles. He wipes the blood on his pants and keeps walking.

After crossing what seems to be a shower instalment, he stops at the entrance to the next room when a headache hits him hard. As he grunts and holds his head, his sight becomes tinted with orange, and he is barely aware of the shadow of a slasher in front of him.

But as soon as it comes, it leaves, leaving nothing but the whisper of his name…

"What the hell?" Harry articulately asks himself before continuing down the room and into an access hatch.

**_Welcome, CEC Engineer Harry Potter. Access granted. _**

* * *

><p>"Well, at least he's doing alright," Hermione assures herself as she watches Harry crawl inside an access hatch and begin scuttling through it. As he turns left at a corner, she sees an unmoving arm just slightly ahead of him. Oddly, when he crawls closer, its owner growls and scuttles away. She sees Harry stop, waiting to see if someething will happen, but when nothing does, he continues to crawl.<p>

She yelps in surprise when he falls through a loose vent and into a room. He lands in the same position he was crawling, so he looks around quickly before standing. Next to him, Hermione sees a man, possibly dead, floating slightly due to a few light-purple beams holding him up.

She sees Harry move to a red box next to the floating man just as Narcissa contacts him.

"Harry, what happened? Are you alright?"

Harry doesn't answer immediately, instead feeling around for a bit before ripping out a module from the box. The purple rays immediately turn off and the man's undeniably dead body falls to the ground. When Harry begins to fit the module onto his palm, he finally responds.

"Why are you helping me?"

"If Scrimgeour finds you, more people will die."

"Including me."

"Not if you follow my route!"

"I don't like this…"

"You don't have to like it! Just hurry, before you get locked in."

By this point, Harry had finished setting up the module on his left wrist, which is surrounded by a small amount of energy that also surrounds Harry's hand a moment later. Hermione, ever curious, sits up in order to properly see what it is.

She watches as a green hologram pops up explaining how to use the Kinesis Module he had just acquired. Harry, not one to miss a beat, points his hand at one of the sticks around the room and activates it. To her utter surprise, some kind of energy suddenly flies out of his palm and grabs the stick, holding it up like it was being held by a hand.

"What the?! That shouldn't be possible!" Hermione says, then backtracks and face-palms. "I live in a world where a muggle's 'impossible' is a magical's 'walk in the park'. I need to rethink these things."

She turns back to the screen just as Harry fires a stick into a necromorph that had appears on the outside of the room he was in. Another necromorph appears from the other side, so Harry quickly picks another stick up and fired it directly at the where the shoulder blade should be. The baton stabs right through it and drags the necromorph through the air, impaling it on a nearby wall, where it hangs uselessly.

She watches as Harry walks up to the body, curious about what he will do. To her surprise, he outright punches the body, somehow making the lower part of the body detach from the upper part in a spray of blood. Hermione wasn't sure what she wanted to yell about: the fact that Harry punched the dead necromorph for no reason, or the fact that no human body part could possibly be detached through a simple punch, strong as it may be. She decides on the latter when she sees Harry pick up a couple of credits that popped out of the body.

* * *

><p>About two minutes later, after traversing a room where he had to impale several necromorphs using Kinesis, Harry finds himself near what seems like a surgical room. Through the glass window, he sees a man lying on the bed, chest cut and held open, and three blue lasers pointed inside his chest cavity. The man is also screaming for help, so that alerts him that this guy is currently having a bad day.<p>

"Help! Help! For the love of God, somebody help me!"

As soon as Harry walks to the doorway of the room and steps inside, the man spots him and cries out, "You! You, please! Get me out of this!"

Harry walks up to the computer that controls the surgical tool while saying, "Hang on, I'll cut you out of there. Is that a tissue laser? A plasma cutter?"

The man is about to answer, but the growl of a necromorph as it drops in front of the doorway to the room draws their attention.

"Oh shit!"

"Fuck!"

The surgical tool spins around and moves toward Harry as the necromorph steps inside the room menacingly, aiming for the man lying down.

"What the fuck are you doing?!" the man yells to Harry, desperately trying to kick the necromorph away.

"Damnit!"

* * *

><p>"HELP HIM, HARRY!" Hermione screams to the TV as she watches him try to put together a makeshift plasma cutter.<p>

* * *

><p>"Help me!" was the man's scream just before the necromorph cuts off his leg, stabs him in the chest, and then cuts off his head.<p>

"Ah, dang it!" Harry yells out, bringing his makeshift weapon up. The necromorph rounds on Harry just as the man lets loose two shots to its legs, cutting them off and sending the necromorph to the ground, then a shot to one of its arms, cutting it off and killing the reanimated beast. Another necromorph drops from the same spot the first appeared , and ambles into the room. Without missing a beat, Harry takes off both of its arms, killing it.

He steps up to both corpses and stomps them, revealing some plasma cutter ammo and a small health pack. He stores both and walks out to the other side of the room, where a necromorph tied down on a bed is struggling to get free. Harry fires a shot at its shoulder, which passes through and takes off its neck as well. Once the thing is fully dead, and he is sure of it, he walks past it and into the next room, where he finds green boxes that he can stomp on. He makes off with more plasma energy and a few more credits.

Moments later, as he is going through a cleaning room, Narcissa contacts him again.

"Harry, it's Narcissa. You have to dismember the creatures to stop them!"

"I know," Harry says, "I've had a lot of practice."

_'Well, technically I haven't. But my body has,' _Harry thinks.

"Just try to stay in one piece," Narcissa pleads.

"Thanks," Harry responds before cutting the connection. He continues on through several other hospital rooms before entering what appears to be some kind of lobby which, judging by the flashing red lights and blaring alarm, is currently on lockdown.

"Harry! Harry, come on, they're after us!"

Slightly startled, Harry zones in on the voice and notices it's the same guy he saw on the video earlier.

Seamus Finnigan.

Seamus begins running down a a ramp as Harry yells out, "Hey! Hey, wait! Who is?! Who's after us?!"

Harry could tell that his game character was confused, and decides to immediately run after the man. After going down some ramps, Harry reaches the lower floor of the lobby and turns just in time to witness a heavy security door closing vertically over the exit.

"Damnit!" Harry yells out as he runs up to the door, hoping to slide under it. It's all for naught, as the door slams down fully just as he reaches it.

"Oh no!" Seamus groans from the other side. He stands up and looks through the gap as a door behind the first one begins closing horizontally, saying quickly, "Harry, it's me! Patient four! Patient four, remember? Do you remember? Oh no..."

SLAM!

Thus, the doors close between them.

With an angry growl, Harry gets back in contact with Narcissa and yells, "Narcissa, your fucking route didn't work! There's a security lockdown!"

"I told you to hurry! How'd you miss it?!" Narcissa calls back in an equally short tone.

"Look, I don't need your help," Harry says in an exasperated tone.

"Fine!" Narcissa exclaims icily. "Let's see how long you last without it."

Almost as if timed, Harry hears the familiar sound of an air vent busting open as soon as Narcissa cuts the connection.

"Ah, shite!"

* * *

><p>"For Merlin's sake, Harry, language!" Hermione exclaims at the t.v., feeling her old habit return as she watches Harry dismember several necromorphs that jump into the room and try to attack him. By this point, she isn't too afraid for his life, as he's proven that he knows how to fight the reanimated corpses well and can find ammo in enough quantities to never run out if managed properly.<p>

* * *

><p>As soon as Harry kills the seventh necromorph that had attacked him after he had gotten stuck in this room, the alarm begins to dwindle slowly, until the lobby finally becomes silent. Realising that no more necromorphs are coming for now, Harry decides to get in touch with Narcissa again.<p>

"Narcissa?" Harry calls through the RIGlink. "Narcissa?! Okay, you're right. I do need your help... Talk to me..."

"Look, Harry," Narcissa responds shortly, "we don't have to be friends... but like it or not, we're stuck together. Scrimgeour's your enemy, not me." After a momentary pause, she says, "Alright, I've found you a new route."

"Fine," Harry says as he walks behind the receptionist desk and picks up a power node and some credits. "So where the hell am I? How did another necromorph outbreak get started?"

"You're on Titan Station orbiting Saturn. As for the outbreak-," Suddenly, the connection begins experiencing static, over which Narcissa momentarily says, "Shite! Scrimgeour's jamming my signal!" before it completely cuts off.

"Well... guess I'm going on my own then..." Harry mutters before continuing, back into the insane hospital...


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I own nothin'!**

After traversing several rooms and a small decompression section which was easily taken care of, Harry finds himself inside what appears to be a patient treating room. He tries to go through the open door at the other end, but a series of scanning lasers stop him, scanning his RIG and closing the door immediately. Looking around for something to help, Harry spots a red box next to an open bed that just screams 'this is what you have to use!'

Harry walks up to the box and clips the makeshift Plasma Cutter to his pants pocket. With a strong tug, the cover separates from the box and is promptly thrown to the ground. Harry kneels by the box and begins to move, disconnect, and reconnect wires inside, driven by the implanted knowledge of systems engineering that Isaac has. After a few moments, Harry finally disconnects all the necessary wires and pulls out the object he was after: a Stasis module, used to keep patients like him down for a while. He easily attaches it to his wrist, alongside the Kinesis module, and makes sure it's working well.

He'd find himself putting it to the test soon enough.

With a crash, a slasher dropped from an air vent near the locked down door. Harry notes that this one was more armoured than the others he'd encountered so far before the thing runs at him wildly. Shrugging mentally, Harry raises his left hand and releases a Stasis shot.

**0o0o0o0o0o0**

Hermione watches with wonder as a blue bolt of Stasis flies out of Harry's palm and strikes the necromorph. The necromorph is then covered in a blue aura and slowed down significantly. Harry brings out his Plasma Cutter and takes off its arms before it can regain its normal movement, killing it. He then moves on and refills his Stasis on a Stasis Recharge station before casting Stasis on the door and running past it quickly.

As soon as he crosses the door, an odd sound reaches Harry, and by proxy, Hermione as well. It sounds like... vomiting, but not human vomiting...

As soon as Harry turns, she understands why, and is understandably grossed out.

Exiting the next available room via forceful crawling is one of what Hermione assumes are the workers of the hospital. Several liquids fall on him, making him groan in pain until he gives up and falls on the ground, his skin burned and destroyed by what Hermione now understands is acid. Harry begins walking in the room's direction, and halfway there, the guilty creature stumbles out.

Unlike the slashers that Harry had fought so far, this necromorph is more humanoid in nature. It's leathery skin is peeling away in many places, showing that it's arms and legs have thicker muscles than a normal human's. Harry backs up quickly, most likely in alarm, and that's what probably saves him, and the creature moves its head forward when it sees him and spits out a load of acid that looks strong enough to fry off a man's face.

Perplexed, Hermione can't quite believe she just thought that.

**0o0o0o0o0o0**

Harry raises his Plasma Cutter and promptly blows off the necromorph's left arm, making it fall of with a spurt of acid. He follows up by taking off its other arm as it begins to stumble his way, killing it with another spurt of acid that nearly catches him due to the momentum of the creature. With that task done, Harry moves into the room, having to take out two other Pukers, as he had affectionately nicknamed them, before moving on. The next room he enters, after passing a hallway with a Save Point that he quickly used, is a room that has something he definitely needs: a store.

After taking out a necromorph that was playing possum and getting a power node from a circuit box on a wall behind it, Harry walks to the front of the store and is about to activate it when a scale next to the store catches his eye. Curious, Harry turns to it and stands on it. A moment later, the scale reads '195'.

"A hundred and ninety-five pounds, huh? Not too bad, I guess," Harry comments as he turns to the store and opens it.

_**Welcome, CEC Engineer Harry Potter. Updating inventory to CEC engineering load out.**_

The store folds back before it even fully loads, and a door behind it slides up. Instinctively knowing what comes next, Harry looks over his shoulder, where he is sure Hermione is watching him, and gives a thumbs-up before walking into the opening and carefully laying back against the backrest. Straps hold down his feet and wrists, and the doors close.

**0o0o0o0o0o0**

As the doors close on Harry's form, Hermione stares, gobsmacked, at the screen.

"Did Harry just break the fourth wall?" Hermione asks herself before quickly jotting it down.

The muggleborn watches the screen as a light descends from the top of the store, all the way to the floor. A moment passes before the doors open again and Harry steps out.

Instead of his patient suit, Harry is now wearing a suit of what seems to be armour. Well, not fully. On closer inspection, Hermione realises it is a full-body black suit which has several pieces of rust-coloured protective metal covering his arms, legs, and torso. The boots were rather thick and covered in metal plating as well. Hermione watched with fascination as Harry adjusted the suit slightly, then stood still as some metal parts came out of the front and back of the suit to form a rounded helmet in the same colour scheme which had three horizontal slits that were emitting a soft, white light.

Hermione at this point had two thoughts in her mind. The first? _'How can Harry see through that?' _The second? _'That... looked very hot...'_

**0o0o0o0o0o0**

Harry looks around in wonder. The suit he has on, the Standard Engineering Suit if he recalled correctly, is actually a little heavy, but nothing he can't withstand. The visor isn't too bad, and the light emitting from the helmet allows him to see rather clearly. He turns back to the store and buys a few more things before finally closing it.

Curious about the weight of his suit, Harry steps back onto the scale next to the store and is slightly surprised to see that his weight is now 255 lbs. Meaning the suit itself weighs about 60 lbs.

Shrugging, Harry turns and follows his locator to a door a little past the store, in front of which is an air can. Harry stores it and opens the door, suddenly needing to rebalance himself as all the air around him is vacuumed out through the door. The cause is obvious, as it seems something had smashed into the wall across from Harry and destroyed it, causing everything to be blown out into space. Harry takes a look at his air metre and notices he's still got a bit more than a minute, so he quickly walks to the next door, stopping momentarily to get with Kinesis a power node that was floating outside the room.

After crossing the door at the other end of the room, he waits a moment until the door behind him closes and he can breathe properly again. As soon as he can, he walks forward and realises he is out of the hospital. He is about to get in contact with Narcissa, but the groan of metal to his right startles him, making him turn and raise his Plasma Cutter.

A burning tram at the far end was rattling ominously. Harry kept his Plasma Cutter focused on the tram, but what climbed onto it was much more important.

"Oh, fuck..."

**0o0o0o0o0o0**

Hermione had been quite surprised when Harry's suit apparently let him breathe in a decompressed room. She figured that the suit must have a personal oxygen supply, most likely due to the deep space mining operations that the 'Previously on Dead Space' cutscene had talked about, although she couldn't discern where the supply was on the suit.

She watches with trepidation as Harry walks into a normal room, thankfully full of oxygen, and walks ahead to the middle of the room. An ominous rattle catches her attention, and apparently the camera's as well, as it moves to a burning tram car at the end of the room, which begins to shake suddenly. A large, blackened claw reaches up from behind it and grabs onto the car, then another arm comes up, and both work to lift the large necromorph had appeared.

Its body was mostly black in colour, almost as if it had been under a flame for most of its creation. The major exceptions were at the middle of its arms, where the joints were yellow and glowing in colour, and its 'tongue', which Hermione notices when it roars at Harry. The tongue has a sort of scythe at the tip, and just under it is a glowing, yellow sac.

But Hermione hadn't truly noticed its size until it jumps off the tram and nearly onto Harry, who scrambles back in surprise. The thing is _very _big, nearly three times Harry's size. And that's what scared her most.

"Come on, Harry, you can do it!" Hermione cheers at her best friend as he begins the battle.

**0o0o0o0o0o0**

While Harry couldn't actually hear the cheer, he nonetheless feels a wave of confidence flow into him, which makes him smirk under his helmet at the three-legged monster.

The Tripod begins to stomp slowly toward him, and Harry quickly decides that it's probably best to keep the thing at a distance. He backs up as it approaches him and began firing plasma bolts into its right arm, getting five shots into it before the thing suddenly speeds up, surprising him enough that it manages to hit him with its left claw, sending him flying into a wall with a loud thud.

"Damn," Harry mutters as he gets up, his health bar now in yellow. A large shadow covering him alerts him that the creature has approached him, and he looks up in fear as it towers over him, it's 'tongue' slithering out menacingly. In desperation, Harry looks around what he can see of the room and his eyes land on a Stasis Recharge station next to a locked door.

_'Of course!'_

Just as the Tripod's tongue lashes out, Harry lifts his left hand and fires a bolt of Stasis into its body, stopping its movement immediately. The tongue, Harry is shaken to see, is only about an inch away from his visor and moving slowly in his direction. The fear he had felt moments ago suddenly dissipates as an idea comes to his mind, making him grin dangerously. He carefully grabs the extension just behind the scythe and places the mouth of the Plasma Cutter directly onto the yellow sac on the tongue, firing a plasma bolt at point blank range.

A plasma bolt at that distance is nothing to be scoffed at. Harry distantly remembers the fact that plasma energy loses its, well, energy, as it flies toward its target, and rather quickly. Hence why shots from up close are more damaging than from across a room or hallway. And at point-blank range, the plasma bolt easily slices through the yellow sac, destroying it completely and severing the scythe from the rest of the tendril. Harry quickly runs past it before the Stasis wears out, watching over his shoulder as the blue aura fades from the Tripod and it stumbles back in shock, pain, and mostly anger.

Once at the recharge station, he quickly presses the button and urges his Stasis to refill, watching the Tripod over his shoulder. The necromorph turns and fixes its glare onto him, crouching like a lion prepared to pounce onto its target.

Just as it jumps, Harry's RIG alerts him that his Stasis is full. With one smooth motion, Harry turns and fires a Stasis bolt at the airborne necromorph, stopping it mid-flight. Without missing a beat, Harry shoots two more plasma bolts into its right arm, fully severing it, then runs away from the wall. The Tripod slowly jolts in mid-air due to the limb loss, and when the Stasis wears off, it spectacularly crashes against the wall, bending the metal and nearly popping open the only door there other than the one Harry came through and the one he was supposed to go through.

Unfortunately, the Tripod struggles into a standing position, but by that point Harry is sick of it and releases an entire clip of plasma energy into the remaining arm, severing it and finally killing the creature. The now limbless Tripod roars and struggles slightly before finally laying still on the ground.

Still wary of the necromorph, Harry looks around and uses Kinesis to grab one of the breakable green boxes around the room, which he throws at the creature. As soon as the box touches the Tripod, it lurches and roars, the tissue on its back spiking up sharply, for a few moments before finally laying still.

At this point, Harry's character gets in contact with Narcissa, signalling to him that the battle is over.

"Jesus, that thing was angry. Uh, hey, Narcissa? I'm out of the hospital."

"Good," Narcissa responds immediately. "The tram station is just beyond the apartment blocks-,"

"Hang on," Harry interrupts, "I need more answers. How long have I been here?"

"... three years," Narcissa responds after a short pause. "Scrimgeour found you floating near Aegis Seven, and brought you here to study."

"Why can't I remember anything?" Harry asks, his voice tinged with a small amount of desperation.

"The Horcrux you found imprinted your brain with a self-replicating signal. The longer you're awake, the more the signal spreads. It's _killing _you, Harry. Scrimgeour tried to keep it in check with memory suppressants."

"You said you could fix it, right?"

"Only if you reach me in time. Tram Station. Get moving."

With that, the connection cut off, and Harry, understanding the situation a little more now, checks his waypoint and runs to the next place, a room at the far end that leads to an access hatch he can crawl through.

When he pulls himself out of the access hatch, he sees that he's in what seems a maintenance room, if the store, bench, and working table to his left to his left are any indication. On the ground in front of him is an audio log, which Harry picks up and downloads to his RIG.

"_Listen up! This is Sorenson from CEC. Cut off their limbs! It's the only way they go down! It's their limbs, that's the secret! Comms are down__; w__e can't get a broadcast out so tell everyone you see!"_

"Well, at least someone knows what's happening and how to fight it," Harry mutters before he quickly makes a stop at the store to sell the ruby semiconductor he had acquired from the Tripod. With the total credits, he bought himself a power node to add to the five he already had, then used the rest to buy some more plasma energy.

**0o0o0o0o0o0**

Hermione comes back into the room just as Harry closes the store and moves on to the bench, carrying a plate of food she had quickly cooked up. She had to once again curse the fact that she couldn't simply conjure food, as she didn't want to be out of the room for long in case Harry needed her to turn off the machine.

She quickly sits and nibbles on a piece of bread as she watches a screen pop up over the opened bench. The screen shows three options: Plasma Cutter, RIG, and Stasis.

Ignoring the Stasis option for now, Harry inspects the Plasma Cutter and RIG upgrade circuits before using four power nodes on his RIG to upgrade his health twice and increase his air metre; then the remaining two on the Plasma Cutter's first two upgradeable nodes, bringing its damage and reload up by a point each.

Finally, he closes the Bench and walks out of the room, being greeted by the sound of what seems to be a commercial to his left. As soon as he walks that way, however, a few necromorphs appear, making him have to focus on them. Harry takes care of them with some ease, and Hermione notes that he seems very much in control for a person who has never played the game.

The source of the commercial that had been playing becomes obvious when Harry finishes up the necromorphs and walks ahead a little more. On the window display of an electronics store is a looping message by none other than the ex-Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour, standing regally in front of a blue wall adorned with the EarthGov logo.

"**Attention. This is Director Scrimgeour. A station-wide emergency is in effect. In accordance with Titan Station Civic Code, I am declaring martial law. All citizens are ordered to evacuate. Looters will be shot on sight. This is **_**not **_**a drill. Move immediately to the nearest evac route."**

The message loops endlessly, and Harry looks at it for a short time before moving on and using a Save Station on the next wall. A door was placed near the windows behind him and Harry was about to check it out when a small hologram next to the door caught his attention, and by proxy, Hermione's as well. It simply stated that a power node was needed to open this door.

"Ah, damnit," Harry curses, "And I used up all of mine upgrading my stuff. I should keep one handy in case I encounter these again."

"Good idea, Harry," Hermione whispers as she watches him move on and open the big door his locator pointed him to. As soon as it opens, Harry is greeted by the sight of a ruined apartment floor, at the end of which he sees a woman try to run his way only to be cut down by a slender necromorph that immediately jumps on her body and rips her apart.

"Ooh…" Hermione winces as she sees this. She watches as Harry lifts his Cutter and shoots both of its arms off from his safe point, killing it. He walks into the room, and almost immediately, a purple glow catches both his and Hermione's eye.

It was a power node, resting innocently on the floor. Harry quickly runs to it and picks it up, planning to backtrack to the door he had seen and see if he could find more ammo or supplies, but several cries catch his attention. He turns and moves to a large metal gate, past which he can see a lobby of sorts. In it, to his dismay, an infector is beginning to infect a corpse while a number of people run out. Without preamble, Harry lifts his Cutter and puts it in horizontal mode before firing on the infector, attempting to stop it before it finished. He ends up succeeding, as two of his shots slice the infector's probe in two and make it fly off while spurting yellow liquid.

"That's disgusting," Hermione says, looking at her meal for a moment before her stomach informs her through a loud growl that it needs sustenance.

**0o0o0o0o0o0**

Harry quickly turns back to the closed room from earlier and places the power node in the needed slot. With a sort-of chirp, the door's hologram becomes blue, allowing him to open it.

Inside, Harry looks around at the storage closet-like space, finding a few clips of plasma energy along with a small and a medium med pack, one bronze semiconductor, and a text log describing Planet Cracking and how it started. Harry downloads the log but doesn't read it, as it was not interesting at the moment. Instead, he once again follows his locator and enters an elevator in the next room, which takes him to the lower floors.

Halfway down, the elevator suddenly shakes violently and stops, the lights going out. His visor's light increases to make up for the darkness. Harry can distantly hear the sounds of someone screaming, and turns his head in order to hear it better, keeping his Plasma Cutter ready.

The door of the elevator suddenly opens, showing that the elevator had stopped a little above the next floor. The screaming had gotten closer at this point, and a man suddenly appears and attempts frantically to crawl onto the elevator, looking behind him in fear.

"Whoa, hey, calm down!" Harry exclaims, kneeling in order to help the man, but before he can, a slasher's blade appears and spears right through the man's chest. "Ah, shite," Harry mutters as he watches the man be dragged away, screaming all the while. The doors close again and the elevator once again starts moving, stopping a few seconds later near the bottom floor. Harry shakes his head before stepping out, where a voice immediately calls his attention.

"Harry! Harry, over here!"

Harry turns left and sees that, from the other side of the apartment blocks, someone is waving his arms and generally trying to get his attention.

A video link pops up in front of Harry, showing the face of none other than Seamus, looking as imbalanced as he did earlier.

"Who are you?" Harry's character says, slightly rudely.

"It's the drugs, Harry," Seamus whispers conspiratorially, "They gave us drugs to make us forget… but it's all coming back!"

"I don't know what you're talking about! Why are you calling me?"

But Seamus wasn't looking at Harry anymore. Instead, he was looking slightly underneath him, saying, "Harry… Harry, look out!"

The connection goes into static and cuts off just as a leaper appears and climbs over the railing, immediately going for Harry, who steps back and hits the leaper with stasis before taking off its head and arms/legs, killing it. Harry looks back over to where Seamus had been, but the man had run off, who knows where. With a small shrug, Harry continues, taking several turns in order to find the next elevator he had to take. Once there, he contacts Narcissa again.

"There are necromorphs _everywhere_," Harry says, "Is the entire Sprawl infected? How'd this happen? The Horcrux was _destroyed_, Narcissa, I _destroyed _it!"

"You destroyed _**a**_Horcrux, Harry," Narcissa responds, emphasising the 'a'. "Scrimgeour built another one."

"On this station?" Harry asks, bewildered. "Why?"

"It's powerful alien technology. Scrimgeour wants that power. Get to the tram. It'll take you to the Cassini Towers T-ra-m St-t-tation…" Static begins to blur Narcissa's words before the connection goes dark.

"Narcissa?" Harry asks. His only answer is the RIGlink closing. "Damnit…"

**0o0o0o0o0o0**

The next area Harry enters is suddenly locked down in a quarantine and filled with slashers that Harry takes care of without issue. Once the slasher horde is over, however, the quarantine doesn't lift, leading Hermione to think that whoever invented that mechanism had the right idea but has no right to complain when they trapped in with necromorphs.

A chilling scream suddenly comes from the screen. Hermione looks at it just as a necromorph she hadn't yet seen appears: a slender necromorph with broken skin, one leg, and a large, yellow pod on its left arm. It suddenly opens its mouth and screams in the same chilling way before beginning to hobble towards Harry, who doesn't allow it to and immediately shoots the yellow pod on its arm, which explodes powerfully and rips the Exploder apart.

"Yikes…" Hermione mutters. "Good call, Harry."

To her surprise, Harry suddenly turns his head a little and says, "Thanks."

She remains silent for a few seconds, staring at the screen with wide eyes, before saying, "H-Harry?"

"Hermione?" Harry asks, in the same perplexed tone.

"You can hear me?!" Hermione exclaims.

"Well… now I can…" Harry says haltingly. "What happened? What changed?"

"I… I don't know," Hermione says, standing from her seat and putting her plate on a nearby small table before looking at the chair and controls for the machine. "This is new…"

"Agreed," Harry says shortly, checking his locator before moving on, "But at least I'm not as alone in this as I was earlier. I have to tell you, 'Mione, it's been chilling having to traverse this on my own."

"I can imagine," Hermione says, sitting where she had been a moment ago and crossing her legs underneath her. "But you can get through this."

Though she can't see Harry's expression, she can almost feel him smile before he says, "Thanks."

**0o0o0o0o0o0**

Well, this is certainly new. Harry had just been taking out necromorphs when a voice sounded in his mind, sounding suspiciously familiar. It was only when he responded to it that he realised it was his best buddy Hermione. Harry didn't know exactly what changed in the machine that it suddenly allowed him to talk to someone who wasn't in the game, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth and continued on, reaching the tram station moments later.

However, as soon as he stepped in, his vision changed, flashing to a darker tone with orange flashes of light all around. And in his ear… he heard a familiar voice, although this one was not Hermione.

"_Harry…? Are you there? I'm so cold…"_

"Ginny…?"

Harry continued forward, trying to find the voice of his girlfriend. The screens all around the path he is on, which should be showing advertisements and possibly train schedules, were only showing flickering images of a freckled face surrounded by reddish ginger hair…

"Ginny!"

"_The needle is burning in my arm… Harry? Where are you? The room is getting dark… I can't see you… Harry?"_

"Ginny! Wait!"

Harry quickly dashes up the ramp in front of him, finding himself in the middle of two tram tracks. There, sitting on top of one of the waiting benches...

"Ginny…?"

The shade of Ginny suddenly looks up, its eyes and mouth filled with a bright light that makes Harry step back in shock. All of a sudden, a red, burning tram screams by as it flies down its tracks, and at the same time, the image of Ginny flashes in a bright orange light and disappears.

Harry stays standing there, pensive. What had been real? What hadn't?

"_Harry?"_

Harry doesn't immediately answer to Hermione's call of his name, instead turning and looking at the stationary tram on the other side.

"_Harry? Are..?"_

"I'm… fine, 'Mione, I'm ok," Harry says, hoping to keep the shakiness out of his voice.

Just as he approaches the tram, a movement from behind the doors catch his eye. Inside the tram, an infector approaches a body lying on the floor and immediately attaches to it, gruesomely transforming it into an enhanced slasher.

As soon as the transformation is done, a _ding _sounds and the doors open, whereupon Harry wastes no time in firing plasma bolt after plasma bolt into the wings of the infector now standing directly between the doors. Once that one is taken care of, Harry looks up just as the slasher stands and begins to run towards him. Harry attempts to take out its arm, but this being an enhanced slasher, plus with the delay of him having to reload, the creature manages to slash his arm and scratch the armour plating on his ribs before he can manage that. Harry then shoots at the other arm, taking off that arm from the joint and killing it.

"_Are you ok, Harry?!" _

"I'm fine, 'Mione, it's nothing but a scratch," Harry reassures her, using a small med pack to take care of it. Finally, he enters the tram and goes to the car farthest back, finding the mainframe of the tram. Eager to be out of there, Harry rips off the cover and slides his hands inside the box, deftly moving the necessary wires in order to hack into the mainframe. Moments later, a lurch from the tram alerts him of his success, so he finishes tying up the loose wires and stands up, grabbing his Cutter once again.

Just as he looks up, he is startled by a shadow being reflected on the wall in front of him… one that has two long, curved arms.

He quickly turns, but isn't fast enough to avoid the slash of the slasher behind him, which stabs its right blade into Harry's left arm. Harry yells out in pain as he grabs the slasher's other arm to prevent it from slamming the other blade into his visor and instead uses all his strength to push the creature back before punching the thing right on the head, making its head fly off, which makes it step back in recoil.

Left arm hanging uselessly next to him, Harry brings his Cutter up with his right hand and shoots off the slasher's right arm, killing it. He picks up the plasma energy it drops and walks forward, thinking, _'I don't have a med pack large enough to deal with this, but it's only going to slow me down if I don't take care of it. My left arm is completely numb, and I'm no medic, but I know if I don't treat it, I'll probably lose it…"_

As soon as Harry enters the next car, he's greeted by a puker that slams through the window to his right. Harry quickly kills it before it can gain its balance and continues, killing an exploder, then a slasher, before finally finding a medium med pack in the next tram car.

He quickly brings up his RIG's internal structure on a holo-screen and, using Isaac's knowledge of engineering, modifies a few codes so that the AutoDoc focuses on his left arm over anything else. He then uses the med pack and groans as the wound and arm are properly healed and the annoying stabs of pain are taken care of. With a few more coded entries, he returns the AutoDoc to its normal operations and closes the holo-screen.

"_What did you just do, Harry?"_

"I changed my RIG's Automatic Doctor, which is a system built into RIGs that helps heal or contain wounds, so that it focused on my left arm over everything else while I used that health pack."

"_Oh, alright. But… how did you know how to do that?"_

"I… don't fully know. I feel like the knowledge is there in my head… as if I've had it for most of my life but never actually reached it until this point, if that makes any sense."

"_I suppose that's another side effect of the machine."_

"You know," Harry says as he takes out a few slashers that jump into the tram car he's in, "You never did give a name to that contraption. Do you plan on it?"

"_Hmm… I'll have to get back to you on that. I'm not quite sure what I'd name it."_

"Well, do let me know."

"_I will. But, seriously, Harry, that technology is out of this world!"_

"Literally," Harry responds with a chuckle as he advances to the door at the end of the tram. As soon as he opens it, he's startled to see that the next tram car has broken off from the one he's in and is some distance away.

Thinking of how to get past this, Harry cocks his head and goes through his options for a bit. Finally, he decides on a course of action and, looking back to make sure no necromorphs are sneaking up on him, jumps from the floor of the tram and uses his gravity boots to 'fly' to the next car.

Despite the fact that this isn't anything overly new to Harry due to the implanted knowledge from Isaac, he nonetheless feels a sense of exhilaration that he normally feels whenever he's in the air. Using his suit's thrusters, he speeds up in order to reach the next car. A grinding noise catches his attention, and he looks up to see that one of the double door of the next car is shaking and about to break loose, most likely in his direction.

"_Do a barrel roll, Harry!"_

Harry smirks and does just that, twisting and deftly avoiding the flying door. Another grinding noise brings his focus back to the tram car ahead, where the second door is about to also break off.

"Oh, come on," Harry mutters as he does another small barrel roll to avoid the second flying door. Pushing his thrusters, he finally reaches the tram car and, after a few moments of struggling with momentum, manages to roll into it. Thankfully, no necromorphs appear in this one, so he runs to the end of the tram car and into the next one.

About halfway through it, the car suddenly rocks side to side, making Harry lose his balance. He grabs onto a pole for support, looking around as the walls cave in slightly and the lights flicker. The tram rocks once again, this time harder, making the tram move downward and simultaneously making Harry lose his grip and begin to slide down the ramp the car floor had become, twisting to avoid the necromorphs as he slides through three tram cars before falling out of the end of the third one toward the ground.

Unfortunately, something snagged Harry's right leg, abruptly stopping his fall and leaving him hanging, upside down, some inches from the floor.

"Ugh…" Harry groaned as he got his bearings, realising he was hanging upside down. Seeing some ammo and a health pack on the floor below/above him, he deftly reached for it and stashed it before looking down at his body and noticing the cable that was holding him aloft. He was about to cut it with his Plasma Cutter, but a growl from in front of him cut him off.

Dragging itself towards him was none other than a legless slasher, growling at his upside-down form. Harry quickly aims, not having an issue with aiming upside down due to having done so several times while battling Death Eaters, and kills it. But several more take its place, and Harry is soon forced to look to many sides in order to not be cut up like an upside-down pig headed for the slaughter.

"_Wow, even upside down, you're not to be taken lightly, Harry."_

"You said that very same thing when we had to take out Macnair, remember?"

"_I remember. Maniac that one, just like Hagrid said."_

"Damn right," Harry responded as he took out an exploder that itself took out several slashers in its vicinity.

The horde ended rather quickly, and Harry was once again about to cut the cable, but when he looked toward the tram car that was still stuck into the wall, a roar caught his attention. The car began to shake and rattle, shaking him as well, before a large, bull-like necromorph stomped into view, its arms and torso the only thing Harry could see.

"_What the bloody hell is that?!"_

"A brute. A bull-like necromorph made from a bunch of other corpses," Harry responded in a low voice, looking at the beast.

It roared in Harry's direction before attempting to swipe at him, but its thick arms weren't long enough to reach the upside-down man. Harry realised what he had to do when he saw the low glow of the yellow spots on the brute's arms, and he quickly aimed his Plasma Cutter at it and shot endlessly, landing several shots into its right shoulder blade that succeeded in taking off its arm.

The brute roared in pain as its right arm popped off and swiped at Harry with its left, cutting the cable that was holding him up. Harry fell to the ground with a grunt and shifted around for a bit before slowly getting up. Suddenly, a thick suitcase fell on him, surprising him and sending him back down. He looked up in shock when he heard a loud grinding of metal and saw that the tram car was shaking ominously and sliding its way out of the hole it was in!

"_Harry, run! Get out of there!"_

Harry needed no more encouragement. He quickly stood up and ran as if the devil itself was on his heels. He managed to get out of the tram's way just in time as it slammed into the ground where he had been moments later. It exploded the next second, throwing Harry into the air and against a wall with a yell.

Harry laid down on the floor for a short while, gathering himself, before standing up and catching his surroundings.

"_That was… harrowing…"_

"You're telling me…"

With a defeated sigh, Harry got in contact with Narcissa.

"Narcissa? I need a new route."

"_What happened?"_ Narcissa asked in concern. _"I thought we'd lost you."_

"Unscheduled stop," Harry replied in annoyance. "Where am I?"

"_How'd you end up there?"_ Narcissa asked, perplexed. _"Hang on… Well, this won't be the most pleasant route, but it will take you to the Cassini Towers Residential Suite."_ A beeping suddenly began to ring out from the transmission, making Narcissa curse. _"Shit! Scrimgeour has your signal again! Keep moving!"_

"Okay," Harry assured.

"_You're very important to them, Harry," _Narcissa said. _"Hold tight! I'll contact you soon!"_

With that, the connection closed, and Harry sighed again as he checked his waypoint and began to follow the route.

"So, 'Mione," Harry said aloud, "What do you think of this Narcissa?"

"_Honestly… I'm not sure. She seems like she genuinely wants to help you, but…"_

"But what?" Harry said as he kept running through the different hallways.

"_Well… the game seems to replace the original characters with people you know based on what interactions you've had with them in the real world. So… what could happen with Narcissa when you do finally meet her, based on what you know of her?"_

Harry had to think hard about that one, but filed it away when he entered the next room, a large room that seemed full of bright colours. To his dismay, he saw that some of the walls were filled with drawn pictures of many different things, obviously the work of children. And to his right, at the far end, was a door, above which the words, 'Titan Elementary' were written.

"Oh no…" Harry moaned, hanging his head in sadness. "I hope those kids managed to get out…"

"_Me too, Harry… Me too."_

When Harry began to walk in the other direction, headed towards a store and save station, a screech caught his attention, making him turn in order to see what necromorph it was, as he had never heard that one before.

Running out of a nearby store were small necromorphs, with grey, leathery skin and claws. To his horror, he realised just what they were.

"No way… kid necromorphs...?" Harry muttered, lifting his Cutter. "Guess the Horcrux doesn't differentiate between adults and children."

He quickly began taking the kids out of their misery. The small necros fell easily, taking only one shot to bring them down. To balance that, he noted, there seemed to be a lot of these. Whenever he killed one, another quickly took its place, making him have to use an entire plasma clip in order to take them all out. He was glad to notice that every single one carried something inside, so he came out of the fight with quite a few credits, some plasma energy, and a stasis pack. He turned to the store and sold off a gold semiconductor he had found, gaining three thousand credits. With that, plus what he already had, he bought himself a Pulse Rifle, which would be useful should he encounter the Pack again, and he had a feeling he would. After buying a few rounds of ammo for both the Rifle and the Cutter, a medium and small health pack, and a power node for when he next encountered a bench, Harry closed the store and tested the Rifle.

Just as he was about to turn and use the save station, a video log popped up in front of him, showing none other than Seamus, looking as jittery as he did earlier.

"_Harry! Harry, you still alive?!" _he said, looking around nervously.

"Yeah, just about," Harry responded dully.

"_We can't talk long… I think they're tracking our signals." _Harry didn't respond, so Seamus kept going. _"Are the memories coming back to you? T-They're coming back to me… the good ones… ow!" _Seamus suddenly clutched his head in pain. _"T-The bad ones… The more I remember, the more my head hurts…"_

"Take it easy, Seamus…" Harry tried to soothe the man.

But Seamus simply shook his head and continued. _"I keep seeing the symbols… do you see the symbols too, Harry? And him… I keep seeing his face…"_

"Who's face?" Harry asked, perplexed.

There was a sudden burst of static, and Seamus looked to his right before looking back at Harry and saying, _"Ah shit, they've found me." _With that, he scampered away, and the video closed.

"O…kay?" Harry muttered as he used the save station and took the elevator to the upper level.

"_You know, it's a little sad, seeing Seamus so broken and senseless."_

"Yeah, you're right…"

As the doors of the elevator opened, a Pack necromorph ran away from the elevator and toward the railing. His trigger finger itchy, Harry quickly raised his Cutter and killed the necromorph with a direct shot to the neck just as it was about to jump onto the railing. A couple of credits came out of it, which Harry grabbed with Kinesis and stored. He began to run around to the other side and contacted Narcissa in the meanwhile.

"Hey, Narcissa, there's this crazy guy that keep contacting me. I saw him back at the hospital."

"_Seamus Finnigan. He was a patient in the project, just like you."_

"Yeah? Well, why was _he _there? What does he want?"

"_He's a psychopath, Harry. Stay clear of him… He murdered his own wife and child."_

That piece of info shocked both Harry and Hermione to their core, and it took a moment for Harry to respond, albeit only with a simple, "Okay, I'll be careful."

"_Seamus? Killing his wife and child? That's… impossible."_

"It really is… he doesn't even look like a murderer…"

Shaking off the shock, Harry noticed that the elevator he was supposed to take was locked out, and next to it, a red box mounted on the wall called to him. After taking off the cover and easily rewiring the insides, he brought the elevator back online and stepped in. He quickly noticed that the elevator had what seemed to be Death Eater advertisements on the walls, which surprised real-Harry.

He contacted Narcissa again and asked, "Narcissa, I thought you were routing me to residential. This looks like a… _Death Eater _recruitment centre. Am I still on track?" He unintentionally put a nasty emphasis on the words 'Death Eater', as Harry had bad experiences with them, and he was sure that due to the tone, the actual protagonist of the game, Isaac, probably had bad experiences with their equivalent.

"_Yes,"_ Narcissa assured him. _"There's an old maintenance access point that will take you through the waste disposal system and into the Cassini Towers. Stay sharp." _She cut the comm link before he could reply.

Harry sighed and looked ahead waiting for the doors to open again. When they did, Harry was met by a lobby of sorts, over which a Death Eater ad was playing.

_**Have you ever felt like you were meant to be part of something bigger?**_ A woman's voice said. _**Then maybe the Death Eaters are for you. Founded two hundred years ago by our saviour, Tom Riddle, Death Eaters believe that one day, all mankind will be united through the power of a sacred artefact known as the Horcrux. We call this process Convergence. Imagine it: all mankind brought together. With one purpose. With one mind. With one soul. No war. No fear. No hate. If that sounds like an ideal world to you, then look no further. Convergence is coming… and the Death Eaters… are helping it happen. **_It immediately began to play again.

Harry scoffed. "What a bunch of bullshite."

"_Harry, language!"_

"For Pete's sake, Hermione, you know I'm right!"

"_Well… yes, you are."_

"Ah, see?"

"_Shush."_

"I don't understand, though. With a name like 'The Death Eaters', I don't think many people would be willing to join. Hell, I bet the government would swiftly shut them down."

"_I doubt that's their real name. It seems Isaac thinks of Unitologists the same way you think of Death Eaters, Harry."_

Harry raised an eyebrow under his visor. "Unitologists?"

"_I looked up some info on the game online. It seems that's what the religion is called."_

"Makes sense, I suppose. Uni, one body, one mind… It's still a bunch of crap, though."

"_No arguments here."_

Harry continued his trek, entering an access hatch just as a bunch of necromorphs began piling into the room. He managed to get in just in time, and began to crawl through.

When Harry exited the hatch, he found himself in what appeared to be a maintenance hallway. He saw three small boxes against some covered objects, which he quickly broke, taking a few credits and ammo. As he was about to continue, a video log suddenly appeared on a table to his left, making him jump slightly. He looked toward the video, now noticing the body on the chair next to it, and focused on what the man had to say.

"_Okay… to whoever sees this, listen up. You can use Kinesis to pull blades off dead ones… and shoot it back at them. Watch, watch…" _The man proceeds to use his Kinesis module to rip off a blade from a dead slasher on the floor and hold it aloft. He looks back at the camera and says, _"I stayed alive three hours using this trick," _before firing it at another dead slasher hanging against the wall. _"You see? Just shoot it back at them." _He does it again with the second blade of the slasher on the floor, then begins to cough loudly while holding his stomach. _"Ugh… I'm going to bleed out soon. Got clipped pretty bad earlier. So I hope this helps you out, whoever you are."_

Harry stands there, gobsmacked, as the video loops. A moment later, he facepalms, groaning, "I can't believe I never thought of that. Would've saved me some ammo."

"_Well, the game developers can't have expected you to just think it up on your own, considering all the stuff you have to deal with here. So maybe that's why they put this here."_

"Well, either way, it's some great advice," Harry says, moving on. He runs up a ramp and enters the control room of the waste decompression chamber, immediately going for the controls and deactivating them. With a low whirr and a rush of air, the machines inside the room stop moving and withdraw, leaving the chamber silent.

_**Diagnostic mode initiated for Waste Decompression Chamber 752. Compressor piston offline. It is now safe to enter the chamber. Authorised personnel only.**_

With a shrug, Harry moved to the bench inside the room he was in and placed his weapons inside, checking over the things he could possibly upgrade with the five power nodes he had. With three of them, he upgraded the capacity and damage of the Pulse Rifle, then used the last two to continue the RIG branch and upgrade his air metre.

"_Why don't you upgrade your Stasis?"_

"I don't need to just yet. I've yet to come across anything that truly requires it, and my reflexes are good enough that I don't need to slow down enemies quite yet," Harry explains.

Finally, after looking over the different options, Harry exits the bench and picks up his weapons. As soon as he exited he room, he got ambushed by a few necromorphs, both exploders and slashers. Using the Cutter, he quickly took care of the exploders when they and the slashers were in range of each other, taking out two and sometimes three birds with one stone. Out of curiosity, he aimed his Kinesis at one of the once-again-dead slasher's arms and was delighted to notice that he truly could pick up the blade. Without preamble, he turned and shot it at one of the approaching exploders, hitting it right on the weak point and making it blow into pieces, taking out the last two slashers with it.

Harry exhaled a breath he had been holding in and continued, entering the decompression chamber, which was a zero-g area.

"Zero gravity, huh?" Harry mused, remembering what Isaac knew about it. "Guess it's about time to test it out."

He easily detached his boots from the ground and began to float, the thrusters on the back of his suit and inside his boots allowing him to manoeuvre around the room. He found a room to his left, on the same wall as the entrance to the room, that held a power node and some credits and ammo, which he gladly took. He then exited the room and made his way to the control station across from the entrance and next to the large opening he had to go through. He reactivated the waste disposal system and watched as the fan started up again and the door to it was opened, with trash immediately being thrown in. Harry returned to the compression chamber and pushed his thrusters in order to beat the wind and land in a side passageway that led to the elevator he had to take to reach the Cassini Towers.

When he exited the elevator, he found himself inside a residential complex. Most of the doors were thrown open, leading toward several bloody rooms. Harry didn't encounter too many necromorphs here, only a few swarms, which he quickly took care of with his Pulse Rifle, using both the standard firing mode and the secondary, grenade-launching firing mode to take them out quickly. He knew how much damage those little buggers could do.

He then had to enter a room to the right as the main door was shut down. However, just as he entered what seemed like a child's room, if the décor and rotating horse light were any indication, Harry's head suddenly began to hurt, making him grunt in pain and bend over, holding his head. Everything around him flashed orange, and suddenly, the rotating horse image was replaced by an image of a skull, then the Horcrux, a twisting red tower, which was spinning around the room, gradually picking up speed.

And there, sitting on the bed, right arm gripping the left, eyes and mouth glowing…

"_I'm afraid, Harry. I don't want to die… but it's the only way."_

"You're not Ginny…" Harry muttered, looking away from the figure on the bed. "Ginny's dead. You're not really here…"

With a sudden flash, everything was back to normal, and Harry, now slightly more shaken than he had been, held his Pulse Rifle tightly and continued.

"_Harry…"_

"Hermione, I'm… okay… I won't let her get to me. I know Ginny's alive," Harry said.

"_It's not that. You're not ok, and you know it. Why is this happening to you?"_

"Your guess is as good as mine," Harry shrugged.

"_Could this be because of the Horcrux?"_

"I suppose so," Harry mused as he continued through the dark hallways. "Narcissa said something about the Horcrux implanting a self-replicating signal in my head. It's possible this is a side effect of that."

"_I guess so. Just be careful, Harry. I'd hate to lose you to a video game."_

Harry smiled under his visor as his stomach did that funny flip again. "I'll be careful, 'Mione. Don't worry."

"_Of course I'm going to worry, dummy."_

Harry chuckled and continued, running past a balcony on the third floor of the residential sector's main lobby. A flare of light to his right made his chuckle die out as he beheld just what was behind the glass.

"Narcissa," Harry said quickly into his communicator, "Scrimgeour's soldiers have found me. They're tracking me in some sort of gunship."

"_You're almost here! Hurry!"_

"Almost where?" Harry asked, but didn't get an answer as the connection had been cut once again.

Harry continued to the first level, running into the lobby and taking out the necromorphs that appeared. He checked his locator and was annoyed to find that he'd have to head into a Death Eater hallway, but there was no choice, so he continued.

As soon as he exited the ornate hallway and came face to face with the church's main entrance, bullets began to fly over his head, destroying the glass above him and decompressing the entire room. Harry's gravity boots thankfully kept him locked to the ground, but all the air was gone and gunship bullets were flying past his head and impacting against the wall to his left, getting closer slowly.

"_It's Scrimgeour! He's found you! Into the church, hurry!" _Narcissa yelled into his communicator.

Against his better judgement, Harry ran to the large double doors and opened them, looking back for a moment at the room still being peppered with bullets before entering. The door closed again and the room was filled with oxygen, and Harry breathed out a sigh.

He was in the Church of Death Eaters…

Slightly annoyed at his 'saviour', Harry got in contact with Narcissa and asked, "Narcissa, the Church of Death Eaters? Why here?"

"_It's one of the few places on Titan Station that Scrimgeour can't monitor," _Narcissa explained. _"Separation of church and state."_

"No, Narcissa," Harry protested, shaking his head, "We shouldn't be in here. This is the last place we want to be in right-,"

"_**Harry**__! My brother died trying to rescue you! This is important! …this will work. I'm in a safe room at the top of the church. Meet me there, okay?"_

Harry sighed and cut the connection, looking around the place he was now situated. He checked his locator and saw that it was pointing him to the right of the entrance. The door to the left, however, was also unlocked, so Harry checked the other options of the locator (the bench, store, and save station options) and saw that they were all pointing him left, so he decided to head that way.

Once at the room where they were all located, he bought himself some more rounds of ammunition and used the save station, but didn't upgrade anything yet, as he only had one power node. As he exited the room, a video link popped up in front of him suddenly, startling him slightly. It was Seamus again.

"_Harry! Harry, I know you see the symbols too! They mean something!"_

Harry stayed quiet for a moment, then said, "Seamus… yes, I see the symbols.

"_We're a threat to them! I know it! We need to work together!"_

Seamus seemed to be getting more nervous and twitchy by the second.

"Work together? Who's 'them'? You mean Scrimgeour?" Harry asked.

Seamus didn't answer, instead looking around and pacing back and forth. His nose suddenly began bleeding, and he looked down at it with worry a second later.

"_Oh, my nose is bleeding? When did that start?"_

"Seamus? Work with me, Seamus!" But the man was gone in a burst of static. Harry sighed. "For fuck's sake…"

"_Seamus has really gone off the deep end…" _Hermione said.

"Yeah… no doubt about it…" Harry muttered as he continued. "He looks so nervous… it's hard to imagine him killing anyone."

"_Sometimes, it's the ones you least expect it," _Hermione said sagely.

Harry only nodded and continued, finding himself in an ornate hallway overlooking a room where several corpses in Death Eater robes were lying around. One was up on the hallway with him, and an infector reached it before he did. Harry was thankfully able to react fast enough to fire a grenade at it from the Pulse Rifle, destroying it and the body in one blow.

With that avoided, Harry continued, walking down a spiral staircase and finding himself on the lower floor. Here, there was another infector going around, and it managed to create a slasher before Harry could kill it. More slashers came into the room, all wearing Death Eater robes, and Harry had to shake his head as he killed them, wondering if these 'Unitologists' knew just what their 'sacred' afterlife was.

When there were no more enemies, Harry continued, taking a lift up to the next level. The hallways of the church were like a maze to him, but his locator led him to a large room that had a pane of glass overlooking the rest of the station at the far end. The door he needed to take was closed, so Harry looked around and found the circuit for it. It simply needed another battery, so Harry looked for one nearby and inserted it into the necessary slot, activating the door. It malfunctioned, however, and began to move up and down erratically. He'd need to use Stasis to stop it.

After taking care of some necromorphs that jumped into the room, Harry slowed down the door and continued to the next room. As soon as he entered, his head throbbed and his eyesight flashed orange, a sign of another hallucination. On some screens in front of him, a flashing image of Ginny appeared, and her whispering voice sounded in his mind.

'_It's so cold, Harry… it hurts.' _Her voice suddenly changed, becoming more direct, more aggressive. _'Where are you going? You can't run from the pain forever. Soon, you'll beg for a way to end it all…'_

Everything flashed back to normal again, and Harry angrily typed some information into a save station before moving on to an access hatch. Oddly, he didn't hear from Hermione about it, so he guessed she must have been either not in the room or thinking about what had happened.

As soon as he pulled himself out of the access hatch, Harry felt something grab him and turn him around. His helmet disassembled and he pushed his hands forward as the shade of Ginny jumped on him, a syringe in her hand aiming directly at his eye!

"_Harry!"_

Harry heard Hermione's cry and rallied his strength, pushing away the shade of his girlfriend. Just as he felt that he was getting the upper hand, however, his sight flashed orange and Ginny disappeared.

Ginny had never been holding the syringe. It had been _him_, the entire time.

He had almost killed himself…

With a start, he dropped the needle to the floor, where it cracked and rolled away. He looked down at his hands, shocked and horrified at what had happened.

"_Oh my god…"_

Harry looked around the room, once again wondering just why this was happening to him. This had been a massive jump in aggressiveness. Ginny had… no, _he _had almost killed himself…

With a shake of his head, Harry reassembled his helmet and continued on, hoping he could keep himself together until he found Narcissa and got that cure.

"_Harry…"_

Harry merely shook his head, and Hermione got the hint, dropping the conversation.


	3. Chapter 3

After several twists and turns, Harry (who was still stubbornly keeping his near suicide out of his head for now) found himself on a second-floor balcony overlooking the entrance to the main area of the church. As he walked to the lift that would take him to the lower level, he began to hear odd sounds, like those of some kind of animal. Not recognising them, but thinking that it was probably necromorphs, Harry gripped his recently-bought Javelin Gun tighter and walked around the closed gates around the entrance and to the large, ornate door.

However, as soon as he approached them, the doors suddenly groaned and buckled inward as something slammed into them from the other side, nearly ripping it off its hinges and making Harry cry out and jump back, both in surprise.

"Bloody hell..." Harry muttered as he opened his communicator and contacted his guide. "Narcissa, I'm locked out. There's something in the church, it broke the door!"

_"Hang on,"_ Narcissa ordered him, _"I'll try to override all the gates in the area."_

**_SCREECH!_**

"Yeah, well, hurry," Harry muttered. "There's something out here too."

The Boy-Who-Lived closed the communication channel and turned, raising his Javelin Gun. He just barely managed to steel his nerves when a grotesque necromorph (which looked something like a cross between a dog and a human) jumped out from behind a pillar at the other side of the room and charged headlong at Harry with a loud screech. Harry immediately shot a javelin into its head, which flew at the charging beast and dug itself deeply into its forehead with a squelch, but he was shocked to notice it merely flinch. Now realising how close it was, Harry threw himself to his left, which resulted in the necromorph running headfirst into the broken door.

That certainly stopped it, but it simply shook its head and ran back to its hiding spot, where it crouched and leaned to the side, looking at Harry with a tilted head, like a curious child.

Harry, not in the mood for this kind of shit, glared at the necromorph and activated the secondary fire of the Javelin Gun. Immediately, the javelin that had been (and was still) impaled in the necromorphs forehead glowed as it released several thousand volts of electricity into its body, making the creature cry out in pain for a few moments before collapsing altogether.

**_"How does that work? Is the electric charge contain inside of-?"_**

"'Mione, not now," Harry told her brusquely, noticing about three more of these now-dubbed 'stalkers' hiding in different places.

His communicator bleeped online just as one of them charged. _"Harry!" _Narcissa cried out from the other end. _"I don't think I can-!"_

"Not now!" Harry repeated, slowing dorm the charging beast with Stasis and dismembering it with a few well-placed shots from his Plasma Cutter, killing it.

Just as Harry walked forward a few steps to grab whatever the stalker had dropped, he was thrown forward and to the ground rather painfully, not having noticed one of the stalkers moving around and hiding in an alcove to his right. It had capitulated on its comrade's death and immediately attacked Harry, roaring out in seemingly triumph before perplexingly running back to its hiding spot without attacking further. Harry stood as fast as he could, his body aching from that last attack. Formulating a plan as he turned, the raven-haired man aimed carefully and fired a bolt of Stasis (his last one, he realised) at the area near that stalker's hiding spot, successfully catching it in the radius and slowing it down temporarily. The only other stalker decided to attack and charged at Harry, who quickly took out its legs, reloaded as it fell to the floor, then dismembered its left arm as it began to crawl in his direction, killing it. By this point, the Stasis on the previous stalker had worn off, and it immediately attacked. Harry attempted to kill it by shooting off the legs, but it approached too quickly for him to get more than one shot in. He was unable to dodge this charging attack, and the stalker's head-butt sent him crashing to the floor. Noticing his health bar was on yellow and bordering red, meaning he absolutely couldn't take another one of those head-on, Harry wearily got up and began to back away, aiming to put as much space as possible between himself and his hiding enemy. The creature watched him the entire time, and only attacked when Harry's back hit a pillar. Harry carefully watched it approach, throwing himself to the side just in time and watching as it ran headfirst into the pillar, much like the first stalker had done with the broken church door. This had two consequences: it cracked the pillar slightly, showing just how thick the stalker's head was; and it severely disoriented the stalker, giving Harry the opportunity to take off its legs, then its arms, putting it down for good.

Harry sighed as he reloaded his weapons and used a small med-pack on himself, getting his health up to a more solid yellow, which got rid of some of the aching on his body. With that done, he contacted Narcissa.

"Narcissa, are you there?"

_"Harry, I can't unlock the elevator. Can you do anything from your end?" _Narcissa said sadly.

"Let me see what I can do," Harry assured her.

_"Okay. Once you're through, you'll need to go through the funerary wing of the church and into the Crypt. It's very important t-that-at..." _Static began to take over Narcissa's speech, cutting her off temporarily. _"No... No! EarthGov can't jam us in here! Not in here!"_

"Narcissa? Narcissa?! Important that I what?!"

All he got was static.

"Damnit," Harry swore, checking his locator. While he moved to the box he needed to hack in order to get the other lift in the room online, he said aloud, "Sorry for cutting you off earlier, Mione."

**_"It's fine, Harry. You had other things to worry about."_**

"Yeah," Harry agreed as he finally finished the hacking and got on the lift, which took him to another second-floor balcony where he found a power node and some ammo. "By the way, you were asking about the Javelin Gun earlier?"

**_"Yeah, how does it work?"_**

"I'm not fully sure how to explain it. Basically, each javelin has a moderate amount of electricity stored inside, which can be released with the secondary fire of the gun. Due to the conductive material of the javelin, the electricity arcs off the spike, attacking anything near it."

**_"Interesting..."_**

"Yep," Harry agreed, entering what appeared to be a prayer room, if the benches on either side of him said anything. It reminded him of some Catholic churches he had seen during his travels as an Auror.

When he approached the raised podium where the preacher would normally be, Harry saw several Swarm bugs fall from the ceiling almost directly in front of him. Backing up in order to avoid any that decided to jump on him to gnaw on his supple flesh, Harry aimed and fired a javelin directly at the centre of the pack, impaling one of the bugs to the floor. With a smirk, he activated the alternate fire, which fried the rest of the bugs in a dazzling display of light and blood. With that finished, Harry walked ahead to an elevator that was behind the preacher's podium, noticing one seemingly dead necromorph lying next to it.

If his implanted experience taught him anything, however, it was to always check if a necromorph was truly dead before walking by it. Thus, he fired a javelin into the stomach, which immediately made the not-so-dead slasher jump up. Harry quickly backed up before it could move and fried it with the secondary fire, which brought it down in a smoking heap. He picked up a few credits it had released before taking the elevator down.

When the doors opened, Harry was in a rather old hallway leading down to the Crypt. All around him, water was falling from leaky pipes. He walked down the steps and entered a room that contained some crates and a save station, which he used before entering the actual crypt.

As soon as the padded doors opened, a large amount of vapour was thrown out due to the freezing air of the crypt meeting the humid air of the room Harry was in. Harry was glad for his suit as he walked into the frozen chamber, as it regulated his temperature constantly.

As soon as Harry entered the second room of the underground crypt, a spike of pain went through his head as his eyesight flashed orange. When he looked up, he froze in shock.

All around him, the bodies that had been frozen in capsules attached to the walls had broken free, the ice laying around him. The rotten, bloody bodies jerked and struggled, their horrifying screams and moans reverberating inside his mind. Harry fell to his knees as the screams became louder and his head hurt even more, adding his pained screams to the mix.

But as soon as the hallucination came, it disappeared, leaving a kneeling Harry on the cold ground.

Harry grunted and stood, grabbing his discarded Javelin Gun and moving on. He was somewhat glad that Hermione wasn't asking about his well-being just yet. He hated being coddled, and now that he had this sickness, it felt even worse to him.

The third room of the Crypt didn't have anything interesting, but in the fourth one, a puker blasted out of one of the frozen capsules around him, nearly landing on top of him. Harry quickly backed up, but this puker was fast and managed to land some acid on him, making him grunt in pain. He quickly fired a javelin into its gut, making it stumble back, but when he tried to use the secondary fire to lay it to waste, all his gun did was click uselessly.

He was out of ammo!

"Ah, damnit," Harry muttered, pulling out his Pulse Rifle (of which he'd amassed quite a bit of ammo) and opened fire on the recovering puker, felling it. The Boy-Who-Lived quickly reloaded and moved on, dealing with a small ambush on the next room before finally exiting the Crypt altogether and ending up on what seemed like a coffin processing room.

Checking his locator, Harry noticed it was sending him up, towards the door where the coffins were coming in from.

"Narcissa!" Harry tried to contract his guide. "I think I've found the exit, but its way above me! Gravity controls are locked out!" The video screen showed only static. "Narcissa?!" Nothing. "Fuck!"

**_"Harry, language!"_**

Harry couldn't help it. He cracked up at Hermione's declaration, chuckling almost insanely. "When are you going to give that up, Mione?"

**_"When you stop cursing so much!"_**

"Good bloody luck with that!" Harry said as he looked for a way to deactivate the gravity in the room.

**0o0o0o0o0o0**

It took some searching, but Harry was eventually able to turn off gravity. As soon as he crossed the revolving door on the ceiling and restored gravity in the next room, Narcissa contacted him.

_"Harry! Damnit..." _Narcissa cursed amongst a shitload of static._ "I think they're jamming your signal with a mobile device." _She looked behind her and yelled out, _"Someone get me the frequency on that jammer!" _before turning back to Harry. _"They must have a gunship positioned near the compound."_

"Now what? Change of plans?"

Narcissa seemed to debate that for a second before replying, _"No. If they knew where we were, they would have killed us by now." _She looked at something off-screen before turning around and yelling, _"Shit! Signal fading!" _She turned back to Harry. _"Just follow your locator and hurry!" _she urged him before the connection was cut.

"Damnit, Scrimgeour," Harry muttered, checking his locator and running. His trek took him through two more access hatches and a few twists and turns, but he eventually found himself in the room he had been trying to get into earlier: the main area of the church.

Harry saw that the room he was in was quite large, which definitely meant some necromorph attack. He just didn't expect _which _necromorph would attack.

As soon as he took a few steps forward, a massive form dropped from the ceiling and landed directly in front of Harry, throwing him to the ground, drawing a scream from both him and Hermione. As he looked up in shock, Harry noticed it was another Tripod, like the one that had assaulted him outside the hospital, only this one's skin was a pale white... and it seemed much larger than the previous one.

Harry attempted to crawl away rapidly, but the beast didn't give him the option. It jumped into the air and landed right at his feet, grabbing both of his legs with one of its claws and pulling him towards it, its scythe-like tongue slithering out and aiming directly for his head.

Harry's eyes widened as the thing pulled him further into the room, then lunged at his head with its bladed tongue. He turned and was barely able to avoid being decapitated. Looking back up, he saw the tongue come to rest directly above him, the yellow weak point (which he horrifyingly realised was a necromorph'ed baby due to the tiny arms and legs protruding from it) perfectly in his line of sight.

He quickly pulled out his Javelin Gun and attempted to shoot at it, but the gun clicked uselessly, reminding him that he hadn't reloaded it yet. Growling, the creature pulled him once again, bringing him deeper into the room, and Harry realised that his time was nearly running out. He finally managed to load several javelins into his gun and attempted to aim it, but the scythe struck again, making him have to dodge to the side to avoid becoming headless.

Finally, Harry was able to aim, and with greater focus than he thought he could manage, he fired a javelin directly at the weak spot. It successfully impaled itself in the yellow sac, but the creature still hadn't let go, so Harry activated the secondary fire and was forced to cover his eyes as the yellow sac was fried by several volts of electricity before it finally exploded.

The Tripod roared in pain and lifted Harry up before throwing him back, sending him to the ground painfully.

**_"Are you okay, Harry?!"_**

Harry groaned and stood, watching the Tripod climb over a preaching balcony and out of sight.

"Yeah... I'm good..." Harry said in a low tone.

**_"Are... Are you sure?"_**

"Yeah... I'm sure, Mione," Harry said. But he knew he was not fully well. If another moment had passed, Harry was sure that the Tripod would have killed him no matter how much of a fight he put up. The fact that he came close to death wasn't what rattled Harry. Merlin knows he had been quite close to dying several times in his life. No, what truly rattled him was the manner in which he had approached death. He knew that Isaac had faced a lot, but for a simple systems engineer, Harry respected the man for going through so much and yet somehow still coming out with a mostly clear head.

A familiar high-pitched screech drew his attention up. One of the Pack necromorphs had climbed onto the railing the Tripod had climbed over and was looking at him. It crouched and howled at him, pointing in his direction before jumping off the railing and running at him.

Growling, Harry pulled out his Pulse Rifle and began to mow down the Pack that was appearing from nearly every corner of the room. Hearing a screech from behind him, he finished up the last one in front of him with a shot to the head and threw himself forward, just missing the claw swipe of one of the Pack behind him. He turned and killed the ones appearing from there as well. When the last one finally fell, he sighed and went around, collecting the ammo, med-packs, and credits the Pack had dropped before running up an ornate ramp, killing a few slashers and exploders, and finally entering a room behind the preaching podium.

As soon as he entered, he was forced to fire on a legless stalker that had been inside the room. Merlin knows how it got there, but Harry didn't care, he simply filled it with lead until it died. After collecting the medium med-pack it had dropped, he took the elevator at the far end of the room.

"Narcissa, are you still with me?" Harry called into his communicator as the elevator began to head up. "I've reached the top of the church."

_"You're almost here," _Narcissa told him in a happy tone after a moment of static. _"I'll be waiting by the shuttle."_

As the channel closed, Harry sighed and shook his head. "You know, it feels like she's said that to me way too many times," he said aloud to Hermione.

**_"There's something iffy about her... I don't know, but I have a bad feeling about this."_**

"If there's a chance of me getting a cure for this dementia, I'm taking it," Harry said resolutely. "Besides-,"

Whatever he was going to say was cut off as something crashed through the vent on the ceiling of the elevator and directly onto Harry, sending both him and whatever it was to the ground. Due to the recent paranoia, Harry immediately forced his body around so that he was on his back, just in time to dodge the blade of the Death Eater slasher that had landed on him. He grabbed that arm just behind the blade just as the slasher pulled its right arm back and attempted to stab that blade into Harry's visor. Harry managed to grab it just before the blade hit. His hands began to bleed from the force he was exerting on the blade, but he ignored it and struggled with the necromorph. He tried to force his legs into its stomach, and was partially successful, but he couldn't actually push as he had nowhere to push the slasher _to _in the cramped elevator.

**_"Harry, the doors! The elevator doors are open!"_**

Harry glanced up and realised Hermione was right. The elevator had already stopped and the doors had opened, leading to a carpeted hallway.

Harry yelled in pain when the slasher's left blade got too close to his shoulder and managed to cut into his collarbone, although thankfully it wasn't too deep. He growled and kicked up, rolling backwards and sending the slasher flying into the hallway. He quickly picked up his Plasma Cutter and fired several shots into it, killing it.

Harry sighed once more as he used a medium med-pack, which healed his cuts and took away most of his aches and pains. He looked at his suit and made sure it had sealed itself before continuing, realising he was very close to his destination.

**_"You know, Harry, I read that sighing too much can cause hearing problems."_**

"Is that so?" Harry asked as he used a save station. "Then I better stop sighing. Might not hear a stalker running at me."

**_"Stalker?"_**

"Those dog-like hiding necros," Harry explained, approaching the door. "Now shush."

He heard Hermione make a disgruntled noise, but he was too busy opening the door of his destination.

It all went downhill from there.

As soon as Harry entered, he saw the familiar head of blonde and black hair a few feet from a large window. Narcissa had her back turned to him, facing a spaceship docked outside, and Harry was unprepared for when two men suddenly appeared at either side of him and tightly grabbed his arms, holding him in place.

"Narcissa!" Harry called out, startled. He tried to push the men away, but they were strong, and he wasn't able to budge them much. Looking at them more closely, he shockingly realised who they were: Fernir Greyback and Pius Thicknesse, the werewolf and faux-Minister of Magic respectively. Connecting the dots, Harry turned back to Narcissa and growled, "You're a Death Eater... of course you are! Why did I trust you?!"

"Well, you didn't have a choice, Harry," Narcissa said coldly without turning around. "I told you there was a cure and you came running."

"Why are you doing this?" Harry asked, still struggling to get away from the two other Death Eaters. "Why can't everyone just leave me alone, huh?!"

Narcissa finally turned back, facing him with an expressionless mask. "You're a dangerous secret, Harry. EarthGov won't leave you alone because they're afraid you'll destroy their Horcrux." She turned back to the window and walked two steps forward before turning toward him again, this time smirking. "After all... you did build it."

"What are you talking about?" Harry growled, a cold pit settling in his stomach.

"Well, that's why we've brought you here," Narcissa declared happily. "To build Horcruxes for us. To spread glorious Convergence to the entire galaxy."

Harry stared at her, furiously gobsmacked. This woman was insane!

"You people are _unbelievable_!" Harry roared. "Just give me the fucking cure and let me go!"

"Oh, we don't want to cure you, Harry," Narcissa said softly, approaching him. "We need that precious little head of yours just the way it is..." Suddenly, she looked over Harry's shoulder at the doors, as if trying to catch someone off guard. Harry looked at her strangely until she looked back into his eyes. "Who were you talking to? I heard you speaking to someone."

Harry just gave her a growl. "None of your damn business."

Narcissa shrugged and turned, walking to the window. "Oh well, doesn't matter all that much anyways. You'll be speaking soon enough..." She stopped walking and half turned toward the trio, a smirk on her face. "Now would you escort Harry to the shuttle and put him in stasis? The last thing we want... is for him to die."

As soon as she said this, there was a flash of light outside as the ship docked there was peppered with bullets and destroyed, the explosion cracking the glass and making the foursome stumble.

"No!" Narcissa cried out, but was quickly silenced when the gunship turned its sights on the room they were in and destroyed the glass with its bullets, easily killing Narcissa in a shower of blood. All of the air in the room was vacuumed out, so Harry held his breath, watching as Thicknesse was peppered with bullets as well, his head being taken clean off his shoulders. He quickly threw the body off and forced Greyback around so that he stood directly in front of the window as Harry's helmet assembled around his head.

Greyback seemed to notice the situation he was in, as he looked back for a moment then turned back to Harry, his face full of fear, only to be thrown out as Harry forced Greyback off him, sending the man flying out the window and into the cold outer space.

With nobody else in the room but him, the gunship focused its fire on Harry, who attempted to get away from the window. The pull was too strong, however, and he nearly flew out when he lost his grip on the floor, although he managed to grab a railing that was sticking out. He forced himself to the floor of the room and pulled open a hatch on the floor, and with nowhere else to go due to the bullets flying all around him (which miraculously hadn't hit him), he threw himself into the hatch, tumbling down some twists and turns before falling brusquely on a floor below.

"Ugh..." Harry moaned as air was filtered into the room. His body ached all over and he just wanted to rest...

But as they say, there's no rest for the weary.

Harry was alerted that something was wrong when he heard a loud thud, like the sound of something large slamming into metal, along with Hermione's scream of, **_"Harry, look out above you!"_** He dutifully raised his head to see what the issue was, and his eyes widened as he beheld a necromorph even larger than the Tripods he had encountered so far! Its body was spiky, as if it were made of several jagged rocks, and he could just discern its yellow weak points under a lot of armour.

"Oh, shit!" Harry yelled as the large necromorph roared in his face, spittle bouncing off of Harry's visor. Harry shook his head roughly and tried to run away, but the thing was deceptively fast, as it slammed a claw on the roof directly in front of him, sending pipes and debris falling onto his path. The Boy-Who-Lived backed up and fell on his arse as the monster began pulling pipes away in order to reach Harry, and he was just able to see the glaring weak spot in front of him. Without preamble, he brought out his Pulse Rifle, figuring it would be better for such a large target, and opened fire on the armoured shoulder, destroying some of the covering. The beast roared and pushed a pipe in Harry's direction, pushing the man back. Harry tried to escape once again, but the beast would let him be, as it once again cut Harry off, nearly crushing him. Harry once again spotted the weakened weak point and opened fire, destroying it a little more. The necromorph roared as it felt its shoulder be attacked and reached out suddenly, grabbing Harry by the leg and lifting him into the air, slamming him against a couple of pipes around him. Harry groaned in pain but concentrated, waiting until it was holding him up and roaring at him before aiming again and releasing a grenade from the Pulse Rifle, which destroyed the rest of the armour surrounding the shoulder and left the yellow area glaringly open. The beast moved Harry side to side, banging him against a wall and three pipes before bringing him back in front of it. Harry was a mass of pain by now, but he knew he had nearly gotten it, so he forced himself to focus and opened fire on the open weak spot, finally destroying it a moment later and severing the arm of the necromorph.

The beast roared in pain and swayed slightly before throwing Harry away and into a corridor that had a large door. Harry slid for a moment before coming to a stop face down, feeling his body throb in pain. He knew that he couldn't sit still, as the loss of that arm wouldn't be enough to bring down the monster. So he forced himself up, looking over his shoulder and noticing the beast shake itself somewhat before it began to stomp in his direction. Harry began to run away from it, hurriedly using Kinesis on the door in front of him to open it up, which led him into a large storage room with a giant glass pane at the far end.

Harry ran to the glass, trying to think up a plan and acutely aware of the Tormentor inching closer and closer. He was forced to stop and throw his arms in front of himself as Scrimgeour's gunship suddenly reappeared outside, nearly blinding the man when it blasted its search-lights into the room. It immediately opened fire, destroying the glass but once again miraculously not hitting him. Everything in the room was violently vacuumed out, with the exception of Harry, who managed to hold on to a hole on the floor. He looked to see if there was something he could hold on to, but to his horror, the Tormentor was headed his way, the vacuuming effect of space making it skid uncontrollably towards the window, and towards Harry, as if it were on ice.

Harry looked around desperately to see if he could grab on to something, but it was too late. The Tormentor slammed into him, nearly taking his arm out of the socket, and sent him flying out the window, on a collision course for Scrimgeour's gunship. He used the suit's thrusters to align himself and grabbed onto the bottom of the ship when it turned away. Gripping tightly the bars that held the ship's explosives, Harry tried to calm his racing heart.

**_"Harry, watch out behind you!"_**

Hermione's scream once again sent his heart racing as he turned and saw that the Tormentor had also flown out of the room and was tumbling towards the gunship Harry was on! Harry immediately rolled farther down the ship, gripping the bars even more tightly as the necromorph slammed into the ship and sent it spinning uncontrollably.

The Tormentor recovered quickly and homed in on Harry, throwing out its arm in order to grab him. Harry skilfully dodged, using his suit's thrusters to jump around the grabbing claw. After barely ducking under a grab aimed at his head, Harry saw an opening and pushed himself away from the ship, pushing his boosters in order to get away from the ship. The large necromorph wouldn't give up easily, however, as it immediately tried to grab him and succeeded in snatching his leg, jerking him to a stop. Harry looked down his body at the Tormentor and could almost sense the bloodlust inside it, so he desperately looked around for something he could use, as he knew the thing would kill him before he could sever the arm holding him. His eyes homed in on the gunship, where the explosives cache had ripped open when the Tormentor had crashed into it, sending explosive canisters flying out of it. Without preamble, he shot a plasma bolt into one of the canisters inside the ship just as the necromorph tried to pull him close, resulting in it (and all its buddies) detonating in a flash of white, which destroyed the gunship and the Tormentor in one fell swoop.

Due to the Tormentor releasing his leg, Harry was sent flying uncontrollably, desperately trying to right himself. Without warning, he crashed through a window and landed inside a hallway of the Cassini Towers, rolling several times before coming to a stop face down. A moment later, the window was sealed by a metal door closing over it, and air was filtered back into the hall.

Harry laid there on the floor, in pain and without energy. His only plan had been shot to hell. He had nothing now. He didn't know where the Horcrux was. He didn't know how to destroy it. He didn't know anything. He was just a lost man.

**_"Harry...?"_**

"It's over," Harry said in a defeated tone. "I have nothing left."

**_"Don't you dare say that!" _**Hermione yelled at him, startling him. **_"It's in no way over! You need to get the hell up! Just because Narcissa was a lying bitch doesn't mean that you don't have a chance!"_**

Harry's morale raised a few notches at Hermione's declaration. He would have said something along the lines of a thank you, but all that came out of his mouth was, "Language, Mione."

**_"Sorry..." _**Hermione replied in a bashful tone.

"You're right, though," Harry said, forcing himself into a sitting position and applying a medium med-pack to himself as he leaned against a door. "I still have a mission to finish... I need to find a way to complete it."

As if it had been summoned, a video RIGlink suddenly popped up in front of Harry, making him look up in surprise. Who could be trying to contact him?

The answer was apparent when a second later, Seamus appeared on the screen, looking around nervously before asking, _"Harry, you there? Y-you still alive?"_

"What do you want, Seamus?" Harry asked with some irritation. "Look, it's over. All my plans just blew out the window."

**_"That was a terrible pun, Harry," _**Hermione scolded him. He mentally smirked.

_"No, no, no! It's not over! At least, not yet!" _Seamus cried out frantically, looking around again before focusing on Harry. _"Harry, we... we built it! We can tear it down!"_

Harry's irritation was now replaced with curiosity and some hope. "You mean the Horcrux? Do you know where the Horcrux is, Seamus?"

Seamus began to pace around nervously for a moment before turning frantically back to the screen and yelling out, _"I-it's in the Ministry of Magic! The Ministry of Magic! But we gotta move now! Now, now, now, 'cause time's running out, for me, for us-!" _The video suddenly went to static.

"Seamus? Seamus, where are you going?!" All he got was static. "Shit... there's a Ministry of Magic here?"

**_"Doubtful. It's probably the equivalent of the government there, but I thought that was simply known as EarthGov?"_**

"Maybe there's some kind of separate government here," Harry reasoned as he checked his locator and continued. He had to find Seamus.

It was a few minutes later that Seamus contacted him. _"Harry! They were afraid of us after the sessions! I-I remember. They took us to the machine! For the sessions! For the steps!"_

Harry stopped momentarily, wracking his head to try and understand what Seamus was taking about. "I don't remember any... sessions."

Seamus turned to him with a knowing eye. _"You're lucky you don't remember. When you do... _he _starts coming back."_

"Who?" Harry asked, not liking the tone of Seamus's voice. "Who comes back? _Who_?"

But Seamus was no longer paying attention to him. Instead, he looked past the lower left corner of the video RIGlink, his eyes widening in happiness. _"Oh... Look at you..." _Seamus cooed. _"You've grown up so much..." _He suddenly looked slowly behind him, as if following someone or something. _"Where are you going?"_

"Seamus, don't follow him; he's not really there!" Harry urged, but Seamus had turned away, and the RIGlink shut off.

"Is that what I look like during my hallucinations?" Harry asked no one in particular.

**_"I would assume so."_**

"I hope I can fix this up soon..." Harry muttered as he continued.

Moments later, he found himself in a room filled with fire and lacking gravity, which left many objects floating around, some being caught by the tongues of flame.

_"Warning! Fire suppression system malfunction. Please manually deplete the oxygen supply to contain the fire. Non-essential personnel should leave the area at once."_

"You think that might mean me, Mione?" Harry asked aloud as he kicked off the ground and searched for the oxygen supply batteries that should be scattered around the room.

**_"No way, Harry. You're too essential to leave!"_**

"Aren't I always?" Harry says jokingly, pulling out the three batteries he had finally located. All the air was vented out of the room, immediately stifling the fire and leaving the way clear, bar two Lurkers that were blocking his way out. Once he took care of them and entered the next room, he realised that, to get into the elevator in the room, he'd have to go back and get a battery from the previous room, as this elevator's battery was shot. So he did just that, finding one easily and bringing it back.

As soon as the elevator arrived and the doors opened, Harry was suddenly grabbed by a puker that had been in it. Harry yelled out in pain as acid landed on his suit and ate through the black material, finding his skin and burning it. With a loud grunt, Harry pushed himself away from the monstrosity and kicked its chest, activating the thruster of that foot when it connected with the thing's chest. This had two consequences: the powerful fire from the thruster easily split the puker in two, killing it; but the power of the thruster sent Harry flying back into the wall across from the elevator, leaving him lying on the ground, moaning in pain.

**_"That's probably why you shouldn't use your thrusters indoors, Harry."_**

"You don't say," Harry growled, standing up and stretching his limbs. He entered the elevator and headed down, wondering how to get to the Ministry.

Along the way, Seamus contacted him once again, although this time through an audio RIGlink.

_"Harry, the steps. He wants me to follow the steps. Step one, crawl into the dark machine..."_

"Seamus, calm down," Harry tried to soothe the man, "He can't hurt you."

_"He wants me to go into the dark machine, Harry," _Seamus insisted. _"I can't go. She's in there... She's waiting for me."_

"Seamus..."

_"Oh, God, oh God, oh God..."_

"Seamus, listen to me. You need to keep moving. Can you make it to the train? Can you do that?"

Seamus didn't respond for a moment, but when he did, all he said was, _"He's coming... can't talk..."_

Harry sighed as the connection cut off. This was going to be harder than he thought.

After a few rooms, a stalker ambush, and a necessary hacking, Seamus called him again.

_"Harry," _he said hurriedly, "_he's gone. Listen, the steps can destroy the Horcrux. Step one: crawl into the dark machine. Step two: the screws go tight all around..."_

"I don't understand," Harry said, perplexed at the description of the steps and not liking the mental image that came with them.

_"Oh God, he's back!" _Seamus said in fear. _"No! No, no, no, no, no!"_

With a blip, the connection was gone.

"What in the world is he talking about?" Harry asked aloud as he continued through the maze of rooms, his surroundings becoming more and more familiar. "Dark machine? Screws? And who the hell is 'he'?"

**_"I think we'll only be able to get answers out of Seamus, and he's not in any state to be answering questions."_**

"Damn right," Harry stated as he continued, soon finding himself back in the same large room that led to the elevator that took him to that Death Eater room.

A sudden, yelling voice made him stop in shock.

"Come on, you motherfuckers! I'm still standing!"

With a small smirk, Harry continued into the next room, oddly not hearing any input from Hermione on this voice.

As soon as he entered the large room, he looked at the same elevator that he'd taken to get here (Merlin, it felt like ages ago), spotting a red gate blocking the elevator. And behind the gate, Plasma Cutter in hand, and screaming obscenities at the approaching slashers…

… was none other than Hermione Granger.

"'Mione, it's you," Harry said. There was no response from her. Shrugging, Harry continued, stopping to take out a leaper that had appeared in front of him. Once it was taken care of, Harry tried to move towards where Hermione was at.

Suddenly, Hermione turned and fired a plasma bolt at him, missing him only by inches.

"Hey, hey!" Harry said, raising his hands in surrender.

"You!" Hermione yelled. "Stay back! You wanna talk? You talk from there!"

A video RIGlink popped up in front of him, showing him the very woman that had sent him into the game. The main difference was the way this Hermione looked. She was dirty and scuffed, her hair bound in two tails that were laid around her shoulders. She was wearing a red tank top, and he could discern dark green pants from his distance. The most prominent feature to Harry was her facial expression: she was glaring at the screen, or more specifically, at Harry. Due to his experience in reading people's emotions, Harry could also discern some nervousness behind her angry expression.

_"__And don't say you're here to help," _the bushy-haired girl snapped. _"The last person who said that tried to kill me!"_

"Hey, take it easy! I… I'm not gonna hurt you," Harry tried to assure her, finding this situation wrong on many levels. He and Hermione had never been like this, and he had to wonder, just momentarily, if this is how she would have acted around him if he were a pompous arsehole like Malfoy.

_'__Note to self: this Hermione is _not _the one I know.'_

_"__Yeah, you got that right. You try it… and you're dead!" _And with that declaration, she cut off the video link and turned back to what she had been doing. Approaching the gate, Harry realised she was hacking into the elevator, which gave him pause. Hadn't this elevator been just fine when he had come by earlier?

Regardless, Harry approached the gate and took off his helmet. "Look, I think we got off to a bad start here. I'm Harry."

The woman didn't answer right away, merely pausing in her hacking. She turned her head and regarded Harry for a moment before saying shortly, "Hermione. What do you want, Harry?"

"I'm trying to get to the transport hub," Harry explained calmly. "I need to get to the Ministry of Magic."

Hermione turned to regard him fully when he said this and motioned to the mess of blood and limbs on the floor, saying, "What do you think _we _were trying to do?"

"Hey, I can help you," Harry said as she turned back and finished bringing the elevator back online. "Besides, we stand a better chance if we stick together. Don't you agree?"

"Not a chance, Harry," Hermione said, almost sadly, as she turned around and approached the gate, looking at him with an expression he couldn't discern, for once in his life. "Other people are… just a liability." Harry winced slightly, to which she shook her head and walked backwards into the elevator. "I'll release the door lock, but after that, you're on your own. And please… _don't _follow me, okay?"

"Wait, wait…" Harry tried, but Hermione didn't listen. She walked inside and pressed the button to go down, the doors of the elevator closing just as the gate lifted. Harry sighed and shook his head. He had never had an interaction like that with Hermione. Even when she was angry at him, she never abandoned him. If he were honest with himself, it had hurt him just a bit.

_'__No,' _he reasoned, _'this isn't the same Hermione. I need to remember that.'_

"Man, this Hermione certainly is different from you, eh, 'Mione?" Harry asked aloud with a chuckle as he called the elevator. Once again, there was no response from Hermione, which actually began to worry him slightly. Had something happened to her?

Once the elevator arrived, he immediately took it down as well, coming out in the same large room he had been earlier, where he had first encountered the Pack. Now, unfortunately, it was covered in some of the Corruption and some large, zit-like things he had encountered some time before, which liked to spit out explosive blobs whenever he approached. He killed off the ones he could see, as well as some necromorphs that appeared, before checking his waypoint and realising it led him into Titan Elementary.

"Oh, boy…" Harry muttered. "Here we go."

He opened the door and stepped inside, being startled by the massive contrast. Brightly lit decorations hung around him, and the walls were painted in all kinds of colours, blue being the most prominent. A soft, lullaby-like music was playing overhead, and, to his horror, Harry could just barely hear the sound of crying babies in the distance.

"Oh, Merlin…" Harry muttered as he continued into the elementary school, wanting to get out of there as soon as possible. However, despite his desire to move on, he was drawn to a stop at a window that showed a large classroom, where a woman was kneeling on the floor and cooing at…

"Oh, that is just…" Harry muttered as he beheld the baby necromorph. It honestly looked like a dead baby, with its skin being grey in colour and its arms being wrinkled. Its legs seemed to have fused together. And worst of all, on its back was a large, yellow bubble, which didn't bode well with Harry.

"Oh yes… come to mommy, that's it…oh yes, that's it, come to momma… there you go…" The woman cooed at the baby necromorph, which regarded her for a moment before moving closer. The woman immediately hugged it to her chest, whispering happily into its ear.

**BAM! **With a loud cry, the baby suddenly exploded, showering the walls and window with blood and making Harry cry out in shock and stumble back.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck…" Harry muttered to himself as he continued, shivering at what he just witnessed. That had truly unsettled him, and Hermione wasn't responding to him, meaning he was truly alone for the moment. He wondered for a moment if the game's Hermione was doing well, but the thought was thrown out the window when he heard a baby cry that sounded close. As he entered the next room (a nursery by the looks of the baby beds around him), the same baby necromorphs began to come out of holes in the wall. Harry frowned and began to put them out of their misery, the task leaving him drained. He continued through a few room, killing the same baby necromorphs in each one, before approaching the door of an auditorium.

Just as he got close, a strong pain shot through his head as his eyesight was tinted orange. He heard a low hum in the back of his head as the lockers across from the large door burst open one by one. A moment later, everything came back to normal, showing him it was nothing more than another hallucination.

Shaking his head, Harry entered the gym, which had several retractable tables blocking his way out. He made his way to the stage, taking out three Pack necromorphs and an enhanced puker before climbing the stage and walking behind it. He yelled out and jumped back as a smiling sun decoration suddenly fell in front of him, startling him severely. With a growl, he pushed it aside and continued to the panel he was looking for, hacking into it in order to pull back the metal curtain that was his exit while, at the same time, withdrawing all the retractable decorations and tables around the auditorium.

He was ambushed by the Pack, some exploding babies, and one infector once the decorations were gone, but he simply took them all out before moving on. Once outside the auditorium, he followed his locator accordingly, entering a playground room that contained an elevator that would lead him to the transport hub, which he found odd, since that meant just about any kid could leave if unsupervised.

As soon as he entered the room, a hallucination began, marked by the usual headache and tinted sight. This one was a lot stronger, as that bloody ghost Ginny appeared, lightly pushing the spaceship-themed merry go round in the playground.

**_"Still in denial?" _**Ginny said to him in a voice full of spite. **_"Afraid you're gonna cut your wrists if you listen to me?"_**

"I'm not listening to this," Harry growled, moving towards the elevator. "You may fool Seamus, but I know you're not real."

**_"Oh, you claim I'm not real, and yet here I am!" _**Ginny laughed derisively.

"You're just a hallucination," Harry said, trying to convince himself of that fact. "Seamus knows how to destroy you. He knows how to destroy the Horcrux! We _will _destroy you!"

Ginny's shade laughed again. **_"Oh, how convenient. Destroy the Horcrux and all the hurt and pain goes away! Imagine it, Harry: you'll never have to listen to your heart!" _**She suddenly screamed, making the pain in Harry's head increase momentarily before she, and the entire hallucination, was gone.

Harry sighed as he called the elevator, pulling towards himself a power node with Kinesis. When he entered the elevator, he pressed the button to descend and leaned against a wall, retracting his helmet and rubbing his temples.

He was startled when a video RIGlink popped up in front of him, showing him static for a moment before a familiar face and voice appeared.

_"Harry, it's Hermione," _the bushy-haired survivor said to him, pointing her Plasma Cutter at something he couldn't see. _"I found someone. Another survivor; he says he knows you."_

"Who?" Harry asked, already having a small idea. Indeed, the very person who came out from behind Hermione was none other than Seamus.

_"Harry, I-,"_ he tried to say, but Hermione silenced him by pointing the mining-tool-turned-weapon at his face while saying in a deceptively calm voice, _"I _said_... stand still."_

"Hermione, take it easy," Harry said, forcing himself to call her by her full name instead of the usual shortened version he used, "his name is Seamus... I know him."

Hermione looked at Seamus for a moment before turning back to Harry with a frown. _"He looks... twitchy. I don't trust him..."_ Looking back at Seamus, she kept a firm grip on the Cutter and said, _"Don't... move."_

"Hermione," Harry stressed, bringing her attention back to him, "I need him to be 'not dead'. I need him."

Hermione looked at Harry for a moment before glancing at Seamus, who just looked back at her nervously. She considered his words and sighed in defeat. _"Okay, Harry, I'll march him to the hub, but if he does anything stupid... __**anything**__... I _will _shoot him."_

Harry nodded and looked at Seamus. "Keep it together, Seamus. I don't need you getting killed by the pretty lady over here."

Realising what he had said, Harry's eyes widened and he clamped his mouth shut. Hermione seemed to process the words before smirking and saying, _"Charmed," _just before the connection cut off.

Harry sighed for the nth time that day. What the hell had that been about? While Hermione was pretty (that was something he couldn't deny), he had never said it in such a way. That, and the situation they were in was not the best for handing out compliments and such.

Harry disembarked the elevator moments later and followed his locator to the transport hub, which was thankfully close. Just as he entered, he heard Hermione call out from above him, "Harry! We're up here!"

Harry looked up at the second floor, spotting Hermione waving at him, her smirk still in place. A holographic screen popped up from his RIG and zoomed in on her face, bringing her head and shoulders into better quality. Hermione looked behind her and motioned for someone, saying, "Come on, move."

Seamus came into view shortly, waving pitifully at Harry. "H-hello, Harry."

"Hey, Seamus. You hanging in there?"

Seamus gave a weak nod in response.

"Well, this brings up bad memories," Hermione interjected, waving at a building which had the words CEC printed on it in bold, red letters. "I barely managed to escape this CEC facility this morning!"

"Wait, you're CEC?" Harry asked, genuinely curious.

Hermione regarded Harry with a smirk before saying confidently, "Heavy equipment pilot, Class Four." With a raised eyebrow and that same smirk, she asked, "You?"

"Engineer," Harry responded simply.

Hermione seemed to sigh and shrug, turning away and saying, "Nerd. Figures."

_'Now if that's not ironic, I don't know what is,' _Harry thought.

Their banter was unceremoniously cut off when suddenly, every light around them shut off, leaving them in total darkness. Harry and Hermione reacted similarly: each brought up their current weapon (Plasma Cutter for the lady, Pulse Rifle for the gentleman). Seamus, meanwhile, cowered behind Hermione.

"What the fuck?" Harry asked aloud, not seeing any necromorphs or indeed, anything particularly scary.

"I-it's dark!" Seamus exclaimed in fear. "He'll find me in the dark!"

"Ssh," Hermione was quick to shush him. "It's ok... it's just a power outage."

"You guys alright up there?" Harry asked.

"No..." Seamus whined.

Harry heard Hermione sniff, then curse. "Shit, I think life support's out too."

Everyone stayed quiet, digesting this news. Seamus was the only one who reacted, saying in a low voice, "That's not good..."

Suddenly, a video popped up in front of Harry, crackling with static for a moment before it solidified into an image of the man that had been causing so much trouble for Harry during his time in this game.

_"Our two remaining runners: Potter and Finnigan," _Rufus Scrimgeour began. _"I knew it was only a matter of time before you reached the transit hub. You'll find the train inoperable."_

"Are you insane?!" Harry seethed at the man. "You cut off power to life support! There may be other survivors over here!"

_"The public sector is already beyond acceptable recovery conditions, and I can't allow either of you to escape," _Scrimgeour informed Harry with an almost detached air. _"Goodbye, Potter."_ And with that, he walked away and the screen shut off, immediately being followed by a loud, familiar roar.

"Holy shit, Harry!" Hermione yelled, aiming her Cutter at something he couldn't see. "Look out! It's headed for you!"

What 'it' was became obvious when the hulking form of a brute jumped from the second floor edge and landed in front of Harry, rattling the man. Without wasting a moment, Harry dosed it with Stasis and immediately opened fire on its right shoulder joint, managing to get a few bullets in before the Stasis wore off. The brute raised its head, roared, and charged at Harry, who watched it approach carefully and jumped to the side just in time to avoid it.

"Where are they all coming from?!" Hermione yelled from above, dealing with slashers from both sides while protecting Seamus.

Harry shook his head and fired his last shot of Stasis at the brute. To his dismay, the brute actually ducked and the bolt flew just over its head, hitting instead a wall just behind it.

Harry was now truly worried. To have a good chance at beating a brute, one definitely needed Stasis. That, or incredibly good reflexes and a strong body, both of which Harry knew he had somewhat. So, using that thought as pseudo-inspiration, he began to move around the brute, firing at it whenever possible. The brute was resilient, and only some of Harry's pulse rounds penetrated the brute's weak points, the rest being deflected by its strong armour. It was a few minutes later that Harry had managed to weaken it somewhat with hit-and-run tactics, pissing off the brute more than anything else. Just as he barely dodged one of its charges, his Pulse Rifle clicked uselessly when he tried to fire on its back, meaning he had run out of ammo.

"Ah, cripes..." Harry muttered, quickly clipping it to his back in its appropriate place and pulling out his Javelin Gun. The beast turned rather quickly just as Harry reloaded the gun, and he had just brought it up to fire on the beast when it charged towards him and rammed him, sending him flying painfully back until his back hit one of the pillars holding up the second floor. He bounced off it with a loud smack and landed face-down in one of the dark corners of the first floor, just in front of a small cafe. The brute lumbered slowly in his direction.

"Harry!" Hermione yelled, noticing his plight but being unable to do anything except fire at the brute uselessly, as none of its weak points were in a position good enough to be fired upon, resulting in all her plasma shots bouncing off the brute's armour. Harry heard her but could only moan in pain, struggling to get up. He was thankful for his armour, as the way he slammed into that pillar could have easily broken his back had it not been for that. Even with it, though, his back still hurt, and he was honestly surprised his health bar wasn't broken considering the many beatings it had taken. He could feel the shakes of the ground as the brute approached, so he looked around frantically for something that could help him.

And then he spotted it. A few feet from him, tucked in a corner, was a lamp-like canister, which had two important things to Harry: swirling blue energy inside a clear glass bubble around the middle of the canister; and a Stasis symbol etched just above it.

He began to crawl, wincing at the pain in his body, but found that the brute would turn him to paste before he could reach the canister. That's when he remembered his second utility. Without preamble, he used Kinesis to grab the Stasis canister and turned sharply, bringing his arm around in an arc and slamming the canister against the brute, which he was shaken to see was much closer than he first thought.

The canister burst open, thankfully not catching him in the radius. The hulking beast was immediately tinted blue and slowed down significantly. Ignoring the aching in his body momentarily, Harry hurriedly stood and moved around the necromorph. He aimed at its back and fired a javelin directly into its back, immediately releasing the voltage inside it. While he couldn't hear the necromorph roar, he assumed it would be doing just that, and he immediately repeated the attack once the voltage in the first javelin ran out.

With two more javelins and electrical shocks, the beast was down just as the stasis wore off. It seemed to sway drunkenly for a few seconds before falling flat on its face, dropping a ruby semiconductor when its body hit the ground.

Harry huffed in exertion, his aches and pains making themselves known to him in one, painful throb. With a slightly shaking hand, Harry pulled out a medium med-pack and used it, sighing in relief when his pains dissipated, although the shaking remained, but he knew it didn't have anything to do with bodily damage.

It was more mental damage than anything else.

"Harry, are you alright?" Hermione asked, aiming around with her Plasma Cutter. A moment later, she lowered it. "I think that's all of them... for now." The girl activated her RIG and sent a video call to Harry. "Why did Scrimgeour turn off the power. What did you do to piss him off so much?"

"Hermione..." Harry sighed explosively, but decided to explain. "Do you know what a Horcrux is?"

Hermione thought about it for a second before answering. "Yeah. The Death Eaters of my crew wouldn't shut up about it. Why, is it real?"

"Yeah, it's real," Harry confirmed in a deadpan tone. "Scrimgeour made one using codes, patterns, stored in our heads, mine and Seamus's. Everything that's happening on this station is happening because of that Horcrux. I _have _to get to it and _destroy _it and I need Seamus to tell me how."

Hermione stared at him for a moment, processing his story with a half-open mouth, before shaking her head. "You're a strange man, Harry."

"Will you help us?" Harry pleaded.

Hermione gave him a raised-eyebrow look. "We're about to suffocate, so..." she began sarcastically, "I think I'd better."

"Okay, good," Harry said in relief. "Listen, we need power. Without it, we have no air and no train. The Sprawl has to have backup batteries somewhere."

Hermione thought for a moment before looking up in realisation. "Yeah, the solar arrays up there! But... they've been mothballed for years!"

Harry nodded, not minding the last sentence. "Okay, alright, good. I'm heading there now. If I can start it up, and get some power to the station..."

"You'll need someone to open the collector panels," Hermione informed him. "I can do that."

Harry nodded. "Take Seamus, and keep him safe."

She nodded and closed the connection, giving him one last over-the-shoulder glance before pulling Seamus away. Harry squared his shoulders, picked up some ammo and credits lying around, and checked his locator, following it through a few mine-laden hallways. He was nearly beheaded by a guardian, but with a quick grenade from the Pulse Rifle, it was taken care of. With that done, and finding himself five thousand credits richer, he took the elevator next to the dead guardian.


End file.
